Distant work is now a necessary a part of many companies, requiring organizations to rethink how they supply safe, scalable, and environment friendly entry to company sources.
Whereas RDP over Digital Personal Networks (VPN) has lengthy been a well-liked resolution for distant entry, the rise of cloud-based Distant Desktop Protocol (RDP) options provides an more and more compelling different.
This text explores the technical and sensible benefits of cloud-based RDP versus RDP over VPN, particularly within the context of safety, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness.
The Rising Concern with VPN Safety
On Might 6, 2024, researchers at Leviathan Group revealed an unpatchable flaw in VPNs dubbed Tunnelvision that may permit attackers to siphon off knowledge with none indication that they’re there. Whereas there could also be mitigation in some situations, this flaw has no patch and impacts all merchandise that use VPN encapsulation on Home windows, Mac, Linux, and iOS working programs! In line with researchers on the Leviathan Group the assault’s capacity to keep away from detection is probably probably the most problematic ingredient!!
As a standard assault vector, VPNs require open firewall ports on the VPN gateway, which will increase the publicity to cyber threats resembling brute-force assaults, ransomware, and credential stuffing. The broader community entry supplied by VPNs makes them significantly enticing to hackers, as a single compromised account can result in in depth injury to the group. Second, all distant endpoints & areas related to the VPN community / gateway turn out to be extension of the company community! A single compromise of any of those distant endpoints, which regularly connect with VPN over public WiFi at airports, lodges, and insecure house WiFi, can unfold to the company community.
Here’s what CSO On-line says about this unpatchable VPN flaw: Given {that a} VPN is solely an encrypted tunnel and supplies no safety on both finish, they’re a well-liked means for attackers to backdoor an setting. Malware planted on the machine of any VPN consumer can piggyback on an contaminated file and safely experience the VPN to the enterprise’s broader community. “VPNs aren’t necessarily security tools. It’s a connectivity tool” that IT departments have “bolted on and tried to patch things up,” mentioned Dani Cronce, a senior safety marketing consultant at Leviathan and one of many report’s authors.
As companies shift in the direction of Zero Belief fashions, cloud-based RDP has emerged as a greater and safer choice. Cloud-based RDP options don’t require any inbound firewall publicity, and so they limit entry to solely the sources that customers want, minimizing the assault floor and lowering the general threat of breaches. Furthermore, cloud-based RDP options provide superior safety features, together with multi-factor authentication (MFA) and role-based entry management (RBAC), to additional safeguard networks.
What is the Distinction: VPN vs. Cloud-Primarily based RDP?
A core distinction between VPN and cloud-based RDP lies within the scope of entry they supply. Whereas VPNs join customers to your entire community over a publicly uncovered gateway, cloud-based RDP restricts entry to particular purposes or desktops with zero firewall publicity. This elementary distinction reduces the assault floor, limits the publicity of the company community, and makes cloud-based RDP a safer choice for contemporary companies.
VPN: A Legacy Strategy
VPN permits distant customers to entry an organization’s inner community by creating an encrypted tunnel. This method has been the usual for years, offering entry to your entire community, not simply particular sources. Whereas efficient in lots of use instances, it presents vital safety dangers by broadening the assault floor, as customers achieve entry to your entire community over approved protocols. Whereas some VPN options permit sure restrictions, their implementation is so difficult that tech admins forego it.
Cloud-Primarily based RDP: A Fashionable Answer
In distinction, cloud-based RDP options like TruGrid SecureRDP present distant entry to particular purposes or desktops with zero firewall publicity. As a substitute of connecting customers to the community, it connects them to particular person desktops or purposes hosted wherever, lowering the assault floor and limiting potential injury from breaches.
Moreover, efficient cloud-based RDP options embody built-in MFA and Geo Blocking, and might combine with Azure Conditional Entry, which considerably reduces the chance of unauthorized entry.
Why VPNs Are Riskier
Whereas VPNs provide encrypted connections, they’ve a number of inherent safety points. For instance, VPNs require open inbound firewall ports, which are sometimes focused by cybercriminals. As well as, managing and sustaining VPN infrastructure is complicated, and lots of organizations fail to maintain their VPN configurations and patches updated, leaving them weak to assaults.
Information from Kaspersky signifies a pointy rise in brute-force assaults towards uncovered RDP servers, with some international locations seeing an improve from 200,000 every day assaults to over 1.2 million. As proven in Determine 1, brute-force assaults on VPNs have surged from round 200,000 in 2020 to an estimated 4 million in 2024. Concurrently, VPN-based ransomware incidents have climbed from 23% to 32%, additional underscoring the vulnerabilities related to uncovered VPN providers.
Not like legacy DaaS & RDS options that require uncovered firewalls, VPN or Gateway Home equipment, TruGrid requires no firewall publicity and fully shields clients from web visibility.
TruGrid handles authentication within the cloud and ensures that solely pre-authenticated connections can entry company networks, performing as a cloud protect that blocks focused assaults towards a community.
Safety: Why Cloud-Primarily based RDP is the Safer Wager
VPNs require open inbound firewall ports, making them inclined to brute-force assaults, credential stuffing, and different threats. Furthermore, as a result of VPNs typically present entry to your entire community, a single compromised account can result in in depth injury. In distinction, cloud-based RDP eliminates this vulnerability by working with out open inbound ports, making certain that the community stays invisible to exterior threats.
VPN Safety Vulnerabilities
VPNs expose organizations to a number of safety dangers:
- Open Firewall Ports: VPNs require open ports, making the community seen to attackers.
- Single Level of Failure: Many organizations have a single VPN gateway. The saturation or unplanned outage can result in misplaced productiveness.
- Advanced Patching and Updates: Sustaining a safe VPN setting requires fixed updates, which many organizations battle to implement promptly.
Uncovered RDP providers are focused by ransomware operators, with assaults resembling Dharma and Venus ransomware actively exploiting poorly configured RDP servers. An experiment by GoSecure discovered that an uncovered RDP honeypot was attacked over 3.5 million instances inside three months.
Ransomware Households Concentrating on Uncovered RDP
Ransomware households like Dharma and Phobos have been significantly infamous for concentrating on uncovered RDP. Dharma, for example, makes use of brute-force assaults to compromise RDP credentials and deploy ransomware onto compromised programs. Equally, Phobos exploits poorly secured RDP endpoints, typically encrypting crucial recordsdata and demanding hefty ransoms. Each ransomware households thrive in environments the place RDP is uncovered and improperly secured, underscoring the hazards of leaving such providers uncovered to the web.
As soon as attackers achieve entry, they’ll inject malware, execute ransomware, and even disable programs fully, leaving companies weak to monetary and reputational injury.
Exploited VPN Vulnerabilities
VPNs will not be proof against such assaults both. A latest instance is the FortiGate leak, the place the credentials of over 15,000 VPN servers have been uncovered, providing cybercriminals a roadmap to infiltrate company networks.
Equally, ransomware teams like Helldown exploit vulnerabilities in VPN gadgets resembling SonicWall and Zyxel to breach inner networks. These and several other different associated VPN assaults spotlight how VPNs can turn out to be an open door for malicious actors.
The implications of those vulnerabilities are extreme:
- Information Theft: Attackers exfiltrate delicate knowledge, typically threatening to publish it except a ransom is paid.
- Community Disruption: Crucial programs are encrypted, halting enterprise operations.
- Compliance Breaches: Uncovered VPNs and RDP periods can result in violations of laws like HIPAA or GDPR, leading to hefty fines.
To successfully mitigate these dangers, organizations ought to remove RDP publicity over the general public web, together with VPN.
Furthermore, organizations ought to recurrently assess the safety of their RDP configurations in order that they’ll higher perceive the dangers of uncovered RDP. Utilizing instruments like RDP Inspector, companies can establish weak open ports, misconfigurations, and outdated service variations that may expose them to cyber threats.
How TruGrid SecureRDP Solves These Issues
- No Open Ports: TruGrid operates with out requiring open inbound firewall ports, making networks invisible to exterior threats.
- Constructed-In MFA: Multi-factor authentication is built-in and enabled by default, offering an additional layer of safety towards credential theft.
- Granular Entry Management: TruGrid permits directors to limit entry to particular purposes or desktops, minimizing the assault floor.
- Zero Belief Structure: Not like VPNs, TruGrid enforces strict authentication and solely grants entry to pre-authorized sources.
- Simplified Administration: TruGrid’s centralized dashboard allows straightforward configuration and monitoring, lowering IT overhead and complexity.
TruGrid SecureRDP provides a scalable, safe, and cost-effective different to conventional VPN-based options. It eliminates vulnerabilities generally exploited by ransomware teams and ensures compliance with stringent safety requirements.
Efficiency: Cloud-Primarily based RDP Delivers Pace and Effectivity
VPNs are sometimes affected by efficiency points, significantly as extra customers connect with the community. As a result of VPNs route all visitors via a single gateway, they’re liable to community congestion and latency. Moreover, scaling VPNs for giant distant workforces requires vital infrastructure funding, which will be pricey and sophisticated.
Scaling distant entry whereas sustaining efficiency is difficult with conventional VPNs. Cloud-based RDP options provide an environment friendly and scalable resolution that delivers higher consumer expertise, even for giant, distributed workforces.
VPN Efficiency Points
VPNs sometimes devour massive quantities of bandwidth as a result of they transmit all community visitors between the consumer and the company community over a single VPN equipment. This turns into significantly problematic as extra customers join into the community. For these utilizing VPN split-tunnels to reduce visitors via the company community, this exposes the VPN shopper to assaults over the general public web, which might then traverse the VPN tunnel and infect the company community!
Cloud-Primarily based RDP Efficiency Advantages
Cloud-based RDP options, resembling TruGrid SecureRDP, are way more bandwidth-efficient. TruGrid connects finish customers and company networks over a worldwide fiber-optic mesh, bypassing the general public web and delivering low latency expertise. TruGrid additionally permits organizations to deploy a number of connection brokers inside the company community to unfold connection hundreds and enhance redundancy.
Value Effectivity: Decreasing Prices Whereas Enhancing Safety
VPNs include vital upfront and ongoing prices, together with {hardware}, software program licenses, and the sources required to handle them. Sustaining VPN {hardware}, upgrading programs, and coping with potential safety breaches additionally add to the full price of possession.
Cloud-Primarily based RDP Financial savings
In distinction, cloud-based RDP operates on a pay-as-you-go mannequin, without having for complicated {hardware} or community configurations. This mannequin permits companies to scale their distant entry infrastructure with out heavy upfront investments or ongoing {hardware} upkeep. Cloud-based RDP additionally allows quicker deployment, lowering pricey downtime and releasing up IT sources for different crucial duties.
What’s Subsequent?
On this article, we’ve explored why cloud-based RDP is a safer and extra environment friendly resolution in comparison with VPNs, and the way TruGrid SecureRDP addresses the vulnerabilities of conventional distant entry strategies.
Within the subsequent article, we’ll dive deeper into TruGrid’s superior options and the way they simplify deployment, improve compliance, and help safe hybrid work environments.
Get in contact with TruGrid for a free trial.
Sponsored and written by TruGrid.
