Distant work is now an important 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 Non-public Networks (VPN) has lengthy been a preferred answer for distant entry, the rise of cloud-based Distant Desktop Protocol (RDP) options gives an more and more compelling various.
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 information with none indication that they’re there. Whereas there could also be mitigation in some eventualities, this flaw has no patch and impacts all merchandise that use VPN encapsulation on Home windows, Mac, Linux, and iOS working techniques! In response to researchers on the Leviathan Group the assault’s capability to keep away from detection is probably essentially 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 corresponding to 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 intensive harm to the group. Second, all distant endpoints & areas related to the VPN community / gateway grow to be extension of the company community! A single compromise of any of those distant endpoints, which regularly hook up with VPN over public WiFi at airports, inns, 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 offers no safety on both finish, they’re a preferred means for attackers to backdoor an setting. Malware planted on the machine of any VPN person can piggyback on an contaminated file and safely journey the VPN to the enterprise’s broader community. “VPNs aren’t essentially safety instruments. It’s a connectivity software” that IT departments have “bolted on and tried to patch issues up,” stated Dani Cronce, a senior safety guide at Leviathan and one of many report’s authors.
As companies shift in 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, they usually prohibit entry to solely the sources that customers want, minimizing the assault floor and decreasing the general threat of breaches. Furthermore, cloud-based RDP options supply 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-Based mostly RDP?
A core distinction between VPN and cloud-based RDP lies within the scope of entry they supply. Whereas VPNs join customers to the complete community over a publicly uncovered gateway, cloud-based RDP restricts entry to particular purposes or desktops with zero firewall publicity. This basic 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 the complete community, not simply particular sources. Whereas efficient in lots of use instances, it presents vital safety dangers by broadening the assault floor, as customers acquire entry to the complete community over approved protocols. Whereas some VPN options permit sure restrictions, their implementation is so difficult that tech admins forego it.
Cloud-Based mostly RDP: A Fashionable Resolution
In distinction, cloud-based RDP options like TruGrid SecureRDP present distant entry to particular purposes or desktops with zero firewall publicity. As an alternative of connecting customers to the community, it connects them to particular person desktops or purposes hosted wherever, decreasing the assault floor and limiting potential harm 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 supply 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 plenty of organizations fail to maintain their VPN configurations and patches updated, leaving them weak to assaults.
Knowledge from Kaspersky signifies a pointy rise in brute-force assaults towards uncovered RDP servers, with some nations seeing an enhance from 200,000 day by 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 prospects from web visibility.
TruGrid handles authentication within the cloud and ensures that solely pre-authenticated connections can entry company networks, appearing as a cloud protect that blocks focused assaults towards a community.
Safety: Why Cloud-Based mostly RDP is the Safer Wager
VPNs require open inbound firewall ports, making them prone to brute-force assaults, credential stuffing, and different threats. Furthermore, as a result of VPNs typically present entry to the complete community, a single compromised account can result in intensive harm. In distinction, cloud-based RDP eliminates this vulnerability by working with out open inbound ports, guaranteeing 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.
- Complicated 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 corresponding to 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 occasions inside three months.
Ransomware Households Focusing on Uncovered RDP
Ransomware households like Dharma and Phobos have been significantly infamous for focusing on uncovered RDP. Dharma, as an illustration, makes use of brute-force assaults to compromise RDP credentials and deploy ransomware onto compromised techniques. Equally, Phobos exploits poorly secured RDP endpoints, typically encrypting important information and demanding hefty ransoms. Each ransomware households thrive in environments the place RDP is uncovered and improperly secured, underscoring the risks of leaving such providers uncovered to the web.
As soon as attackers acquire entry, they’ll inject malware, execute ransomware, and even disable techniques fully, leaving companies weak to monetary and reputational harm.
Exploited VPN Vulnerabilities
VPNs should not resistant to 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 corresponding to SonicWall and Zyxel to breach inner networks. These and a number of other different associated VPN assaults spotlight how VPNs can grow to be an open door for malicious actors.
The implications of those vulnerabilities are extreme:
- Knowledge Theft: Attackers exfiltrate delicate information, typically threatening to publish it until a ransom is paid.
- Community Disruption: Crucial techniques are encrypted, halting enterprise operations.
- Compliance Breaches: Uncovered VPNs and RDP classes can result in violations of laws like HIPAA or GDPR, leading to hefty fines.
To successfully mitigate these dangers, organizations ought to eradicate RDP publicity over the general public web, together with VPN.
Furthermore, organizations ought to frequently 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 determine 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, decreasing IT overhead and complexity.
TruGrid SecureRDP gives a scalable, safe, and cost-effective various to conventional VPN-based options. It eliminates vulnerabilities generally exploited by ransomware teams and ensures compliance with stringent safety requirements.
Efficiency: Cloud-Based mostly RDP Delivers Pace and Effectivity
VPNs are sometimes affected by efficiency points, significantly as extra customers hook up with the community. As a result of VPNs route all site visitors by way of a single gateway, they’re liable to community congestion and latency. Moreover, scaling VPNs for big distant workforces requires vital infrastructure funding, which may be pricey and complicated.
Scaling distant entry whereas sustaining efficiency is difficult with conventional VPNs. Cloud-based RDP options supply an environment friendly and scalable answer that delivers higher person expertise, even for big, distributed workforces.
VPN Efficiency Points
VPNs usually eat giant quantities of bandwidth as a result of they transmit all community site visitors between the person 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 site visitors by way of the company community, this exposes the VPN consumer to assaults over the general public web, which may then traverse the VPN tunnel and infect the company community!
Cloud-Based mostly RDP Efficiency Advantages
Cloud-based RDP options, corresponding to TruGrid SecureRDP, are much more bandwidth-efficient. TruGrid connects finish customers and company networks over a world 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: Lowering 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 techniques, and coping with potential safety breaches additionally add to the overall price of possession.
Cloud-Based mostly 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 sooner deployment, decreasing pricey downtime and liberating up IT sources for different important duties.
What’s Subsequent?
On this article, we’ve explored why cloud-based RDP is a safer and extra environment friendly answer 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.
