SUMMARY

By now many readers may be questioning the entire concept of remote access, whether via VPN or good old-fashioned POTS lines. You would not be wrong to do so. Extending the perimeter of the organization to thousands (millions?) of presumably trustworthy end users is inherently risky, as we've demonstrated. Because extending the perimeter of your organization is most likely a must, here are some remote access security tips to keep in mind when doing so:

• Password policy, the bane of any security administrator's existence, is even more critical when those passwords grant remote access to internal networks.

  Remote users must employ strong passwords in order to keep the privilege, and a password-usage policy should be enforced that provides for periodic assessment of password strength. Consider two-factor authentication mechanisms, such as smartcards or hardware tokens.

• Ask the vendor of your choice whether its product will interoperate with your current dial-up infrastructure. Many provide simple software plug-ins to add token-based authentication functionality to popular remote access servers, making this decision easy.

• Don't let dial-up connectivity get lost amid overhyped Internet security efforts. Develop a policy for provisioning dial-up within your organization and audit compliance regularly with war-dialing.

• Find and eliminate unsanctioned use of remote control software (such as pcAnywhere) throughout the organization.

• Be aware that modems aren't the only thing that hackers can exploit over POTS linesPBXs, fax servers, voicemail systems, and the like can be abused to the tune of millions of dollars in long-distance charges and other losses.

• Educate support personnel and end users alike to the extreme sensitivity of remote access credentials so that they are not vulnerable to social-engineering attacks. Remote callers to the help desk should be required to provide some other form of identification, such as a personnel number, to receive any support for remote access issues.

• For all their glitter, VPNs appear vulnerable to many of the same flaws and frailties that have existed in other "secure" technologies over the years . Be extremely skeptical of vendor security claims (remember Schneier and Mudge's PPTP paper), develop a strict use policy, and audit compliance just as with POTS access.