When I needed to WFH I used to remote to my work PC, and my options were:
- Google Chrome remote desktop
- Window Remote Desktop + VPN
- Anydesk
Recently my company’s IT department decided to tighten security and blocked all remote access from the internet. After much negotiation, they offered one solution - Teamviewer, saying that they had evaluated the various remote desktop software, and found that Teamviewer was the most secure. And that they were kind enough to allow remote access directly from the internet to work PCs without requiring a VPN connection, because the VPN connection provide no additional security.
I’m somewhat computer literate, but no expert in cybersecurity. It would be much appreciated if experts in this sub could give me some advice:
- Is Teamviewer the most secure remote desktop solution?
- Does a VPN connection provide no additional security?
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Yeah, that all sounds a bit wrong.
To clarify, I know a lot of scammers use TeamViewer as part of their scam, and TeamViewer is legitimate software with real use cases, and we’re not talking about scammers here.
But… a properly configured VPN provides multifactor authentication (MFA, aka 2FA) with centralized logging and auditing, usually with single-sign-on. That is a significant roadblock for any attackers trying to access your office network and therefore your desktop.
Now if they meant a VPN with TeamViewer, then no, a VPN in that specific combination wouldn’t add much because the TeamViewer connection goes through their own servers, but a properly configured VPN with even something like Windows Remote Desktop would be better. (caveat: they would need to make sure the remote desktop is not accessible from the public Internet without VPN)
I hope this gives you some useful background information. Security can be tricky when it comes to weird remote access systems that route through their server and not directly. (FYI, Chrome Remote Desktop does a similar thing, so if using that it also wouldn’t be a benefit to add a VPN on top)
There is no one correct answer here, it will be based on the risk assessments done by your organisation. When people think of VPN, they just think of the encrypted tunnel, but there is alot of other things as well to take into consideration.
A few organisations we have ties with were ransom-wared over the last couple of years due to vulnerabilities in their VPN solution that was built into their firewall (yes it was an enterprise level solution, and yes they were using MFA), added to that it was one of the big names in the field.
Yet at the same time, there have been issues with Teamviewer in the past.
TeamViewer cannot be a secure option for remote access after so many security breaches. And of course it is important to implement security best practices and consider using a VPN as an additional layer of protection, especially when working with confidential or sensitive information.