Comparison Of Remote Access And Direct Access VPN Strategies For Secure Remote Connection Establishment

Functionality of Remote Access and Direct Access Strategy

Discuss about the Server Administration for Virtual Private Network.

The purpose of the essay is to discuss and compare the performance remote access and direct access strategies for establishment of remote connection in a company or an organization. The remote access strategy makes use of the VPN or virtual private network where a client is installed in the computer of the end user. It is generally configured with the details of target network including the gateway of the IP address and the pre shared security key that is needed to establish the remote connection.  Direct access is an alternative to the remote access or VPN strategy and it certainly a cost effective alternative to VPN. The essay evaluates the functionality of both the strategy including the pros and cons of using such strategies. Virtual private network is a more mature and a well understood technology. Direct access is relatively a new technology and was introduced with the Windows server 2008R2 and it fundamentally differs from the VPN by providing a seamless and a transparent solution (Shea & Liu, 2012). The functionality of each strategy, their advantages and disadvantages are discussed in the following section.

Remote access strategy in terms of response time for a company is mainly based on concept and technology of VPN. Virtual private network is a well understood networking framework that has been widely adopted by the company (Wang & Ma, 2013). It is therefore one of the most common ways of establishing a secure remote access to the clients. Virtual private network therefore has a broad client support for the traditional computing platforms and the mobile operating system (Singh & Singh, 2012). The secure of VPN is maintained with the help of numerous authentication platforms.

With the growth of business, it becomes necessary to expand the offices across the country or around the world. In such cases, the data access might be a problem. The remote access servers help in gaining an access to the files and printer services on the LAN from any remote location. With the establishment and growth of business it becomes necessary to establish offices in different location. In such cases the remote access servers provide an intelligent option of gaining the access to the files and services on LAN from a remote location (Kerpez et al., 2014).

The terms remote access specifies ability for a user in gaining access to a particular network from a remote distance. This is mainly useful for the employees who are travelling and is in need to access the resources of the organization and the network (Liyanage & Gurtov, 2014). Remote access helps in providing the users with the benefits of accessing the main corporate local area network of the organization.  It is one commonly used methods of accessing the resources of an organization remotely.

Remote Access Strategy

Direct access o unified remote access is similar to the VPN technology that provides the intranet connectivity to the client computer. Direct access is considerably a newer technology in comparison to the VPN in gaining a secure remote access. It was introduced in the windows server. It is similar to VPN however, has a fundamental differences in its operation in comparison to the VPN (Liyanage et al., 2015). Unlike VPN, the direct access connections are generally established by the machine and not by the user. Therefore, it helps in developing a secure and an authenticated connection. In order to establish the automatic direct access connection, the direct active client needs to possess an active internet connection. Direct Access connection is therefore often bidirectional in nature, which is one of its important distinctions from virtual private network or remote access. Direct access strategy is therefore used to allow the connectivity to the remote users of the network resources of the organization without the need for any virtual private network connections. In direct access, the remote client computers are always connected to the organization and therefore, it eliminates the need of the remote users to establish or break a connection (Maiti, Maxwell & Kist, 2014). The Direct access strategy can generally be managed by the IT administrators of a particular organization and therefore, it is more user friendly in comparison to the remote access system. However, the direct access strategy supports only the joined clients in accessing the system as a security essential.

Pros and Cons of Both Strategies

Pros and Cons of Remote Access

The advantages and the disadvantages of the remote access strategies are discussed in the following section (Hasan, Hossain & Niyato, 2013).

1. The remote access strategy helps in creating a secure and virtual private network where users are connected with the help of an encrypted channel.
2. Security is one of the major challenges in the interconnected world and remote access prevents any sort of security breaches in exchange of the data. Local security solutions may not be sufficient in eliminating the risk of data breach and therefore, VPN is increasingly used in providing a secure channel for data exchange and remote access to the confidential data of an organization (Lospoto et al., 2015). Virtual Private Network provides an encrypted tunnel for data exchange thus helping in privacy and data protection of the users.
3. With the help of VPN or remote access, restricted resources. This is because the VPN has a multiple points of presence in the different geographic location which makes the remote accessibility of the data of the organization even easier.
4. Establishment of the remote access connection using virtual private network helps in routing the traffic as well. Therefore, the remote access server provides a better connectivity of the resources of the organization.

With a number of advantages, there are certain issues associated with remote access and VPN. The disadvantages of using the remote access strategy are as follows (Liyanage et al., 2014)-

1. One of the major challenges associated with the VPN connection is that, the VPN connections have to be user initiated. This makes a VPN connection optional and the user need to decide when to connect with the corporate network.
2. It might require the need of additional software in deployment and maintenance of a VPN.
3. Since VPN are not firewall friendly, it may not serve it purpose in every location.
4. Although VPN prevents different security breaches and data threats, the connection itself is risky as anyone can ask for or attempt a connection to the VPN from any client. However, this can be prevented by strong authentication and access control.
5. One of the major disadvantages of remote access using VPN is that it can be very costly to implement and to maintain as the VPN connections generally posses additional licensing costs.

The advantages of direct access strategy are as follows (Jain & Paul, 2013) –

1. One of the major advantages of direct access strategy is that it can be implemented in a very low cost. Furthermore, it reduces the support costs associated with the system and therefore increases the return of investment.
2. It provides a user less VPN connection, as it is an automatic VPN connection (Yadav, 2015). In remote access, the remote users’ domain computers are used in establishment of the connection with the corpnet.
3. The use of direct access strategy increases the end user productivity by establishing an automatic connection to the internal resources of the organization.

The disadvantages of using the direct access strategy are as follows-

1. One of the major drawbacks associated with direct access is not it does not provide a comprehensive remote access solution. This is because it is mainly designed for the windows clines only.
2. Direct access is a new technology and therefore, it may not be compatible with all the applications of the organization.
3. The direct access is costly to implement as well and the direct access storage device are prone to damage.

Therefore, it can be seen that both remote access and direct access strategies has certain limitations associated with them. The choice of the connection will therefore largely depend on the requirements of the organization. Cost of implementation of both direct access and remote access connection is high. The following section discusses the response time for both the strategies if there is a need for establishing a remote access to the network of a particular organization.

Direct Access Strategy

Direct access connection definitely provides a prompt response in comparison to the remote access strategy. This is because in direct access the connection is established with the help of an automated machine (Melkonyan et al., 2014). This provides a prompt response and easy data availability in tims of need.

The response time is affected by a number of factors which include the  server and the productivity (Brisaboa, Ladra & Navarro, 2013). The response time further depends on the load on the server and the demand as well. The direct access is expected to take a lesser time to respond to the request of the users as connections are established beforehand. This makes the data availability even faster when required.

On the other hand in the remote access server, a secure tunnel or medium of data exchange is maintained. This connection is to be established by the user which is therefore a time consuming process. One the other hand, in direct access, since the connection is already made, the response time is much less in compared to remote access even in there is a large demand for establishing the remote access to the network within an organization. However, due to its bidirectional nature, the direct access is more prone to face conflicts in the communication process (Patel et al., 2014). This is a major drawback of establishing a direct access connection and therefore, many organizations prefer a remote access connection over a direct access connection. However, evaluation of response time of both the strategies suggests that direct access is relatively quick in responding.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that both remote access and direct access can be used by the company for accessing the data of the organization from a remote location. With the growth of the business it becomes very essential to maintain data availability in the all the location or branches of the organization. Furthermore, if an employee is travelling and needs an access to the data of the organization remote access or direct access to the network of the organization comes to rescue. Therefore, majority of the organizations now a day adopt one of the strategies or both in easy access of the company’s resources. The essay discusses the advantages and disadvantages of both the strategies in order to understand which strategy can be adopted by an organization in accessing the internal network of the organization from a remote location. It is found out that the response time for the direct access strategy is much less that remote access and therefore, it is recommended for an organization to adopt this strategy.

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