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VPN, Virtual Private Network, is a way of connecting a remote computer or network securely to another network of computer. In the past this was a big guns ways of doing remote access and required high levels of skills to setup and maintain. Today with even the basic home router creating VPN Tunnels (we call these direct connections Tunnels) is not that hard and a fairly secure way to network remote systems together. Although for higher level of security you really do need a proper VPN device the basic VPN created by these low end devices is prety good for light use. Of course being a huge fan of Small Business Server 2003 from Microsoft let's not forget to bring up the fact that creating VPN's with SBS is pretty straight forward as well.

 

There are downsides to using VPNS such as the requirement you must setup the connection on the remote computer so if your trying to use the lobby computer at your favorite hotel your not going to be able to do it plus if you did you run the risk of leaving being "tracks" which are a security risk. Also with a VPN your typically are trying to move data from point A to point B and this requires time based on the bandwidth available and the size of the files plus overhead for encrypting the data. This can make working with items like Act or even a Word doc useless.

 

Now this is a neat trick. RWW stands for Remote Web Workplace and it's a freebie with SBS 2003 that allows a remote user to connect to their office PC just as if they were sitting in front of it. No VPN, no remote setup, heck you can get there just by browsing - and it's SECURE! Basically if you have ever used Remote Desktop on a XP machine or even terminal server you are familar with the process of how this works. With this setup no tracks are left on the remote computer other than the IE History because all you are doing is web browsing to your server, you log in and then select the office PC you wish to connect to. Since the whole thing can be run over SSL using Windows logins nobody can scan the login info and once RWW starts even if somebody was listening in they would first run into the fact the data in encrypted and second that the "data" is only screens moving back and forth, no data moves with RWW unless you copy something to/from the remote machine. Typical use of RWW is email checking, home sick and need to do some work, at home and forgot to print out that report I need to take to my meeting (so you can print it to the printer attached to the rmote PC) or in the case of one of my clients he works from 6AM-9AM each morning from home doing all his email, taks, print jobs etc before he goes into the office so then when he gets to the office he can spend time phoning his clients and doing things in the office that make him money vs. the paperwork side of things. Probably best of all is he is at home in his PJ's (we hope) having his coffee, catching the TV news and seeing the kids off to school vs. rushing out the door to get to work.

 

As far as downsides there are few other that to use RWW you must have Small Business Server 2003. Yes you can setup RDP sessions to internal PC's without using SBS/RWW however your going to be taking some risk plus having a heck of a time forwarding ports here and there. You can of course setup VPN and then RDP which would be the way to go and how we do it with clients that do not have SBS. I have heard rumors that RWW of some sort will be coming to standard versions of Windows Servers, we'll see.

Outlook Web Access and Outlook Mobil Access are two ways to access your email from nearly anywhere. Both require either SBS or Windows Server with Exchange however to check your email all you need is a PC with web access or a Smartphone/PocketPC device. This to me is the next big thing in remote access as 9 times out of 10 when my clients say they want remote access they really just want remote access to their email. With the use of SSL and Windows logins the connection is secured however you do run the risk of moving data from outside your secure network to a "less" secure place. By that I mean if you sync your Pocket PC or Smartphone and leave it sitting at the gas station then you have basically left your email in anyone's hands. Sure you can put passwords on the device but how many of us do that? With new Smartphones you can access your current email anytime, anywhere similar to the Blackberry if you have seen those around. With a Pocket PC you just need some form of access to the Internet such as wifi and you "sync" to the server. There are also Pocket PC Phones which are similar to Smartphones which can sync over the cell providers network.

 

Outlook using RPC over HTTP is a way to sync your Outlook say on a notebook with your server just like you would with a Pocket PC. The requirement would be the same in that you need Internet access such as wifi or one of those new data cards from the cell providers. This allows you to have a fully connected Outlook no matter where you are which can be pretty useful on those long trips. Using this with "cache mode" can make using Outlook remotely to the office nearly impossible to tell the difference from being in the office.

 

Again there is a security risk with using such devices in that you are taking your email off site and if the device is lost then that data (email) could be compromised. There ae ways to help protect against this such as using a password to turn on your phone or Pocket PC (I am assuming the laptop is passworded) and in the case of a laptop using EFS, encrypted file system. Microsoft has released a new tool for use with Smartphones which allows an administrator to remotely wipe all the data off the cell phone but this does not work with a Pocket PC or notebook.  

Sharepoint is a nice little, FREE, tool from Microsoft which is a replacement for using the old network folder share plus much more. Not only can you store your documents on a Sharepoint server but you can access them via a web browser or from directly inside your application such as Word. Sharepoint also has many other features, far to many for here, but basically it's a web server front end to your company data. There are two Sharepoint products, Portal Server and Services, of which Portal server is not free but WSS is and will run on Windows Server 2003, SBS 2003 already contains WSS.

There are of course more remote tools coming, some Microsoft products and some not. Products like Groove, GoToMyPC and others all offer ways to share and access data from remote locations. Microsoft Live and other hosted services are options as well.