Posts made by dave247

@Pete-S said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@Dashrender said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@Pete-S said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@Dashrender said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@Pete-S said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

Also are you using split tunneling on the VPN connection or is all traffic passing over VPN when connected?

I'm curious how this plays into the current conversation?

OP said he wanted to "make the best use of the remote session in terms of data transmission". It also plays into the security issue, together with credentials and logins.

aww - definitely understand the bandwidth portion, but not the creds/logins though.

Split tunneling is in general considered less secure because the user's computer is basically bridging the internet and your corporate network. And you have zero or little control over the traffic outside the VPN, unless you have some security in place for this.

When not using multi-factor authentication for the VPN tunnel (which the OP isn't) you are more susceptible to phishing attacks.

With split-tunneling and no 2FA on the VPN it's much easier to trick the users to enter their credentials into something that looks just like real thing.

That's how it ties into the security - overall risk.

Here are some covid-19 recommendations for VPNs.
https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/aa20-073a

Microsoft have some new recommendations on how to do split tunneling VPN, particular with O365 and on-prem, to make it secure and to take load and bandwidth off the VPN connection.

Not related to security but it's also possible to have a bandwidth limitation in the VPN appliance without having a bandwidth limitation on the WAN link. There is usually a maximum VPN bandwidth in the firewall / VPN appliance.

We do split tunneling since it doesn't make sense to send/receive ALL traffic through the VPN connection. The connection is secure since we use our security appliance's specific SSLVPN application for users to connect through with specifically configured settings.

@scottalanmiller said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@dave247 said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@scottalanmiller said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@dave247 said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

I wanted to figure out a solution for allowing the users to login to their company issued laptops and then click one or twice and get to their remote desktops as easily and as efficiently as possible.

You CAN make all or most of the credentials between that laptop and the resulting device be cached or saved. So that it is a really quick and painless process.

True but if a user's password expires or they change it, they may get themselves locked out. We try not to encourage saving passwords too much.

For security reasons, we avoid expiring passwords. That's what makes users write them down and make them easy to guess. Non-expiring, or rarely expiring passwords, are shown to be far more secure and make things like this much easier.

yeah I know its a balance. We have had a few trade offs between password length and expiration time

@scottalanmiller said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@dave247 said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

I wanted to figure out a solution for allowing the users to login to their company issued laptops and then click one or twice and get to their remote desktops as easily and as efficiently as possible.

You CAN make all or most of the credentials between that laptop and the resulting device be cached or saved. So that it is a really quick and painless process.

True but if a user's password expires or they change it, they may get themselves locked out. We try not to encourage saving passwords too much.

@scottalanmiller said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@dave247 said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

Then there are usually prompts between the SSLVPN and RDP steps such as SSL cert and other pop-ups. Yes they can check "dont ask again" but this all adds to the chunkiness of everything.

Those are problems that can be fixed, though. Those particular ones should not be like that.

ok disregard then.. not worth mentioning

@Pete-S said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

I don't understand how the use of RDP could do anything to cause multiple logins?

If you RDP in to your desktop using the same login as usual then everything is exactly the same as if you're physically there.

Login 1 : User logs into business issued laptop
Login 2 : User connects to company over SSLVPN using domain credentials
Login 3 : User connects to their internal physical PC via RDP using their domain credentials

On top of this, sometimes the company issued laptop is encrypted and they must enter a password (if there's no TPM chip). Then there are usually prompts between the SSLVPN and RDP steps such as SSL cert and other pop-ups. Yes they can check "dont ask again" but this all adds to the chunkiness of everything.

We also had some telephony/call quality issues (that I won't go into) but I will say that I'm just trying to find something that makes the best use of the remote session in terms of data transmission, so like RDP vs ICA or something. I'm not too knowledgeable in this area though.

I wanted to figure out a solution for allowing the users to login to their company issued laptops and then click one or twice and get to their remote desktops as easily and as efficiently as possible.

@Dashrender said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@dave247 said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@Dashrender said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

When you say things are clunky - what exactly do you mean?

If you are seeing performance issues - that could easily be your ISP connection at the office is saturated. How many users do you have VPNing in? what size pipe to the internet?

Clunky means users have multiple logins and other user-unfriendly aspects of using RDP. It would be ideal to have them be able to connect with a single login (or even SSO) and then have their desktop delivered to them quickly and cleanly.

Boy this is a lot to worry about for a temporary situation. I mean if you were looking to move to WFH in general, sure I'd care, but even for 60 days, I wouldn't spend the time or the money. But that's just me.

I'm trying to envision any of the other solutions being 'less clunky.' Sure SSO can help some, my office connects to several hospitals that have SSO, we still have to log into most systems at least twice - once into the citrix/webportal and again to an app on that portal (the app often being RDP inside that portal). Now some of the apps do work with the first login to the Citrix/webportal, but not all.

Well I mean who knows, it could actually end up being long term. It may be worth it if it runs through the year. Plus we may end up keeping some WFH users through all this.

@Dashrender said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

When you say things are clunky - what exactly do you mean?

If you are seeing performance issues - that could easily be your ISP connection at the office is saturated. How many users do you have VPNing in? what size pipe to the internet?

Clunky means users have multiple logins and other user-unfriendly aspects of using RDP. It would be ideal to have them be able to connect with a single login (or even SSO) and then have their desktop delivered to them quickly and cleanly.

We have fiber Internet where I work and the speeds are great and we only have about 30 WFH users and the pipe is only like 30% utilized. The main pain-point with anything Internet related would user's home network/wifi setup - which we don't control.

@Grey said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

Horizon is great. You could do the RDP exactly as you are, and draw back on all the deployed hardware. End users migrate to their own devices (any device) and still get their own desktop experience. You could pivot to full VDI later, or use it to add a desktop for consultant access, or whatever. It's very flexible.

This is definitely a situation where you get what you pay for, and if you go cheap, you'll get cheap.

Yeah I do like VMware and have heard that Horizon is good. I'm just a little nervous about cost which I haven't really even looked into yet. We do expect to have everyone eventually return to the office so it would kind of stink to spend a lot of money on something we aren't going to really utilize long term.

@JaredBusch said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@dave247 said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@JaredBusch said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@dave247 said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

I know this topic is all the buzz right now..

Currently we are having our users remotely access their internal computers by using secured laptops as "dumb terminals" as they establish an SSLVPN connection to our firewall/security appliance and then RDP from said laptop into their workstation. It works ok but the user experience is clunky with multiple logins and we have had various issues/concerns and hope to eventually get something in place that works better.

I was looking at Citrix and VMware Horizon 7 and they have some "remote to PC" options that are included with each of their main packages. It would obviously be a waste to purchase an expensive product for the purpose of using one single side-feature that lets remote users access their internal company computers. So I wanted to see if you guys could provide any suggestions.

I understand there may be a lot of resistance here against a lot of these products since they are big and expensive and may not be wise business choices, but I am trying to work with what I have and what I know and I know that I don't know much..

If anyone can point to a product/service/mixture of technologies that would help users directly connect to their internal computers while providing a simple and solid user experience, that would be a huge help.

ZeroTier (with Flow rules) + RDP is how I solved this for my clients.

Thanks Jared, I will check that out now. Do you have any sort of latency issues or anything or is it pretty snappy through and through?

It is point to point, so as fast as the network segments can be

Gravy. I'm assuming you're referring to zerotier.com?

@JaredBusch said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

@dave247 said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:

I know this topic is all the buzz right now..

Currently we are having our users remotely access their internal computers by using secured laptops as "dumb terminals" as they establish an SSLVPN connection to our firewall/security appliance and then RDP from said laptop into their workstation. It works ok but the user experience is clunky with multiple logins and we have had various issues/concerns and hope to eventually get something in place that works better.

I was looking at Citrix and VMware Horizon 7 and they have some "remote to PC" options that are included with each of their main packages. It would obviously be a waste to purchase an expensive product for the purpose of using one single side-feature that lets remote users access their internal company computers. So I wanted to see if you guys could provide any suggestions.

I understand there may be a lot of resistance here against a lot of these products since they are big and expensive and may not be wise business choices, but I am trying to work with what I have and what I know and I know that I don't know much..

If anyone can point to a product/service/mixture of technologies that would help users directly connect to their internal computers while providing a simple and solid user experience, that would be a huge help.

ZeroTier (with Flow rules) + RDP is how I solved this for my clients.

Thanks Jared, I will check that out now. Do you have any sort of latency issues or anything or is it pretty snappy through and through?

I know this topic is all the buzz right now..

Currently we are having our users remotely access their internal computers by using secured laptops as "dumb terminals" as they establish an SSLVPN connection to our firewall/security appliance and then RDP from said laptop into their workstation. It works ok but the user experience is clunky with multiple logins and we have had various issues/concerns and hope to eventually get something in place that works better.

I was looking at Citrix and VMware Horizon 7 and they have some "remote to PC" options that are included with each of their main packages. It would obviously be a waste to purchase an expensive product for the purpose of using one single side-feature that lets remote users access their internal company computers. So I wanted to see if you guys could provide any suggestions.

I understand there may be a lot of resistance here against a lot of these products since they are big and expensive and may not be wise business choices, but I am trying to work with what I have and what I know and I know that I don't know much..

If anyone can point to a product/service/mixture of technologies that would help users directly connect to their internal computers while providing a simple and solid user experience, that would be a huge help.

Read: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-overview

We just started testing out Teams where I work.. nothing big yet though, just me an my co-worker.

I'm a dumb ass. I completely failed to mention that we have a completely on-prem setup for AD and Exchange and I'm hoping to eventually move to O365 and set up sync with Azure so users can remotely authenticate for all our SSO apps and things.. I'm mainly thinking more along those lines and wondering how to do that. Moving all our on-prem servers to a remote datacenter would be a completely separate project. I kinda just blobbed them all together in my post.

My company currently has give or take 30 Windows servers, mostly all vmware virtual machines with the exception of a handful special case SQL, DC and misc others. We have several hosted services but no actual servers living in the cloud.

I'm starting to consider IaaS to gradually replace the majority of our physical server infrastructure but cloud computing is pretty new to me. I know almost nothing about Azure but I am going to dive in soon. I figured I'd check here and see if you guys could give me a general inside perspective from any of you already doing it. And I guess I am looking for a general path of moving on-prem servers gradually to the cloud. Like, how is it typically done?

Also, why Azure? We are a Windows shop and I'd like to stick with Microsoft products but I am open to other enterprise options.

anywhoozle the answer is they are stored in the Windows cert store in the MMC snap-in under Certificate Enrollment Requests and I can create as many as needed.

I'm more or less just wondering about the multiple CSR aspect of this now.

@scottalanmiller said in question about multiple CSRs on same IIS server:

Not to do one of those "do something else" posts. But... have you considered using LetsEncrypt? No CSR needed, and free.

Thanks but no, I am setting up an application at work and I have to follow the vendor's instructions. I need to purchase certs from a specific cert vendor and do it all a certain way :s

I need to purchase two SSL certs for two different sites on the same server. I know how to create a CSR but I was wondering if I create a second CSR for the second cert if that will over-write the first CSR or how all that works... I'm assuming I can create how ever many CSRs I want and they will all be valid/stored in some internal database in IIS but I can't find anything that confirms this.

So is this correct? Can I create multiple CSRs for different SSL certs on the same server? Is there a way to view them aside from looking at the actual exported CSR text file? Even if its just a log that says request # exists...

Not sure how this aspect of it works so any help is appreciated.

@scottalanmiller looks like I need to install it on something though. I was hoping to not have to purchase any additional hardware. Still an option though.

I was asked in passing (minimal details right now) about web filtering options for my church. Its just a small org with about 15 or so nodes (PC's, printers, wifi) a handful of users, non-domain and no static public IP or anything. There's a lot of people who come in and connect to wifi throughout the week, including kids. Basically they just want to block porn.

The equipment they have now is a Ubuquiti EdgeRouter type thing little Netgear switch. I wasn't given a price range but I'm just seeing what's out there for free/cheap options for now.

I did happen upon this which may be good enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYwL6-n0qrU - I'm just not sure how well it works.

Otherwise does anyone have any good suggestions for Church/non-profit type setups? Something that would work with the network equivalent of a home network.

OpenDNS might be the best/easiest option for now: https://www.opendns.com/setupguide/#familyshield