Note: This guide is primarily written to help Shadow Techs customers but may be useful for others.

Background: Remote desktop is a very useful tool, especially in this time since so many people are working from home as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic. Remote desktop was secure enough on it's own for a long time but eventually hackers started using phishing to gain access to users credentials and then using those credentials to gain access to those user's office PCs. From there they had the option to cause all manner of mischief, worst of all, they could initiate a ransomware attack. Initially we combated this by adding 2 factor authentication using Cisco's Duo product that has worked very well for a few years now. 

Even though Duo works well to prevent unauthorized remote access to user's office computers, the sheer volume of attempts has started to cause a problem because it overloads the authentication engine in Windows to the point where your connection may be cut off, the connection may be slow or you may not even be able to connect at all without retying multiple times.

The Solution: We have to prevent all unauthorized access to the remote desktop function on the office PC entirely. To do this we need to create a (virtual) private connection between your home PC and the office also known as a VPN and then connect through that. 

To complete this setup, you will need to know the following information:

1. Your VPN connection address (typically this is vpn.yourdomain.com )

2.  The internal name of your office PC (To find this, open Control Panel, (Optionally) click on System and Security and then click on System, you need the value listed for Full computer name )