Network Policy Server and Remote Access

1136 Words3 Pages

The nature of our business requires us to have a flexible sales force. Because of that detail we need to be receptive to the needs of our mobile workforce. The most critical tool involved in their success is the ability to reliably connect and access our company networks. These connections can be from employees using company issued laptops or personal computers used from home or on the road.
For the most part we have addresses the needs of our sales force on a case by case basis but going forward we really need to ensure we have a defined policy to streamline remote access. To accomplish this there are a few benchmarks we need to achieve. First of all the network has to be reliable or in more technical terms it needs to have high availability. Most importantly we need to make sure that the network is secure as much as it is possible with all the different types of users asking for access. Lastly, we need to address how we handle employees using personal or non-company issued computers and how we ensure that those machines meet of other remote access policies.
Network Policy Server (NPS)
Windows Server 2012 is designed to seamlessly manage remote network access and has a few services to help us better manage the process. The first service to become familiar with is the Network Policy Server of NPS. NPS in its most basic function is the series of permissions the servers use to grant access or authentication. Once configured these access policies or groups can be pushed out to our users.
There are three main policies that NPS deals with. The first is connection request polices. This policy “establishes a set of conditions settings used for authentication, authorization, and accounting” (Regan, 2013). The connection request determin...

... middle of paper ...

...e that may not meet the health quality standards of network access. This will also alleviate the needs for those employees to bring the physical devices into the office or the need for it to travel to their locations.
Remote access is a tricky concept to comprehend mostly due to the complexity of all of the different steps and process that all have to work together to ensure secure connections. The number one priority for any company is to make sure networks are secured. With a good portion of our workforce working remotely it can make that task even more difficult. To make sure that our employees devices whether company issued or personal are healthy enough to make those connections we use the NAP functionality of Windows Server 2012 to ensure compliance.

References:
Regan, Patrick. (2013). Administering Windows Server 2012. Hoboken, NJ:
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

More about Network Policy Server and Remote Access

Open Document