Hardware located in the main office on your LAN can allow remote workers punctual and user-specific access to work areas that need to remain secure during any remote communication periods. The ability to use this type of access improves productivity and ensures that employees are able to work remotely without compromising your network security.
The Neoteris Instant Virtual Extranet (IVE) Access 3000 is a hardware device designed to provide web-based application when needed, but also to provide employees with email and messaging, file share, etc., as if they were sitting at their desk.
The Neoteris IVE provides a robust level of security and is easy to install. The company information you provide forms the basis for a self-signed digital certificate, or you can import an existing certificate. The IVE can integrate with MS ActiveDirectory, RADIUS servers, or LDAP directories. Alternatively the administrator may use the local user accounts defined through the administrator console to ensure that your users are able to connect via a web browser. One thing that the IVE requires that some units do not is reconfiguration of the firewall, however this isn't too arduous.
Once ready, the IVE acts as an intermediary between your remote users and any internal requests that require authentication. It replaces the traditional VPN and there is no client software to consider. Replacing the need to introduce an extranet, the IVE provides a scalable and cost-effective alternative with secure authenticated access. It also reduces any potential downtime that can occur.
Authentication can be achieved by RADIUS, RSA ACE Windows NT domain or Active Directory, LDAP or UNIX NIS, so there is plenty of choice, and you can utilize policy-based privileges to your authenticated users through user groups while maintaining rules for length of access via filtering techniques. Traffic is also secured via SSL and user authentication is secured using encryption. Timing out sessions is also configurable so an idle session can be terminated too. There is a lot more to this appliance than we are able to cover in a group test, but we'd certainly advocate a serious look against traditional VPN or extranets. It may be something worth considering.
