Re: What is the most secure way to let users access work files from home

From: Juliao Duartenn (wheeeee@sapo.pt)
Date: 02/26/02 

From: wheeeee@sapo.pt (Juliao Duartenn)
Date: 26 Feb 2002 06:42:07 -0800

Lassi Hippeläinen <lahippel@ieee.orgies.invalid> wrote in message news:<3C739D50.3410B38E@ieee.orgies.invalid>...
> Joseph Phillips wrote:
> >
> > I am looking for a way to allow staff to access Word Processing,
> > Database and sprea*** files from home without giving them unecessary
> > access to the computer network.
> >
> > Is VPN the way to go or does that create the hassle of not knowing
> > what they have on their home computers, viruses, trojans, etc.
> >
> > Any suggestions on what the best way to this might be using Win2k.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Joe
>
> Of course a VPN is the ultimate solution, but I', not sure if it is
> needed. Depends on many things...
>
> One rather trivial trick would be a web page that is used to download
> the documents, authenticated and encrypted with TLS or SSL. Once the doc
> has been edited, it could be sent back either through the web page or
> via e-mail, properly encrypted. This should work in low-volume
> environments. It has the benefit of not giving network access to the
> remote machines, only socket.
>
> -- Lassi

If you can afford it, you could set up a web document server and let
the users manage what they put on it. That way they can access it both
from work and home. The server should be on a DMZ, http access allowed
both from the LAN and the Internet. You would, of course, want SSL on
it.
I've worked with a few of these products, and some are quite nice
(they do folders, permissions, versioning, document previewing, etc.)
and they work on Windows, too. My favorite was Docushare, but I don't
know if Xerox still sells it.

-- jul