Remote-access Guide

checklist when reviewing the integrity of the remote access

by Dr. Jakob Emmerich IV Published 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago

What key documents should be prepared for remote review?

Copies of key documents should be prepared ahead of time for remote review, including the quality manual, procedures, complaints log, nonconformance log, CAPA log, deviation log, validation master plan (VMP), certificates, and any other essential records.

How to determine the appropriateness and feasibility of a remote audit?

Without official guidance, firms must determine the appropriateness and feasibility of a remote audit based on a risk assessment that considers the nature of their products and service, their technical capabilities, and factors such as compliance histories and quality trends.

What are the most difficult aspects of a remote audit?

Replicating an on-site facility and process walkthrough can be one of the most challenging aspects of a remote audit.

What is “all-activity awareness” in remote access?

That is, the goal of a truly secure remote access solution should be to achieve a state of “All-Activity Awareness” – because your data will be the most secure when you can boost the visibility of all remote activity occurring on your network. How do you achieve a state of being the best of the best?

What are the security checklist?

Secure Installation and Configuration ChecklistInstall only what is required. ... Lock and expire default user accounts. ... Change default user passwords. ... Enable data dictionary protection. ... Practice the principle of least privilege. ... Enforce access controls effectively. ... Restrict operating system access.More items...

What do you need to consider when determining your remote access needs?

You should consider these security factors when making your decision: Prompt, automated security updates and patches. Multi-level authentication and authorization steps each time users log in on any device. End-to-end encryption of all connections.

What are the essential requirements need to be satisfied by the remote access to achieve the secure connection?

Five Key Points for Implementing Secure Remote AccessTime-Consuming Setup Process that Requires Extensive IT Knowledge. ... Compromises in Corporate Security Policies Required to Enable Remote Access to Machines. ... The Complexity and the High Cost of Ensuring Security of Remote Connections. ... VPN Security Is Hard to Manage.More items...

What should be included in a remote access policy?

Remote policies have guidelines for access that can include the following: Hardware and software configuration standards for remote access, including anti-malware, firewalls, and antivirus. Encryption policies. Information security, confidentiality, and email policies.

What are the five elements of a remote access security readiness review?

The review examined cybersecurity at the governance layer and identified five critical pillars key to cybersecurity readiness: culture, people, structure, processes, and resources.

What is a best practice for compliance in the remote access domain?

Instead, a best practice is to adopt the principle of least privilege, which means that access for all users should be blocked by default and enabled only for the specific accounts that require it.

What are security considerations for remote users examples?

Five Remote Access Security Risks And How To Protect Against ThemWeak remote access policies. ... A deluge of new devices to protect. ... Lack of visibility into remote user activity. ... Users mixing home and business passwords. ... Opportunistic phishing attempts.

What is a preferred security measure for remote access?

Virtual Private Networking (VPN) is often considered the best approach in securing trans-network communication.

What are the requirements for remote administration?

Any computer with an Internet connection, TCP/IP or on a Local Area Network can be remotely administered. For non-malicious administration, the user must install or enable server software on the host system in order to be viewed.

How do you implement remote access?

How to use Remote DesktopSet up the PC you want to connect to so it allows remote connections: Make sure you have Windows 11 Pro. ... Use Remote Desktop to connect to the PC you set up: On your local Windows PC: In the search box on the taskbar, type Remote Desktop Connection, and then select Remote Desktop Connection.

What is remote access capabilities?

Remote access is the ability for an authorized person to access a computer or network from a geographical distance through a network connection. Remote access enables users to connect to the systems they need when they are physically far away.

Why is remote access important?

With remote access, employees can safely work from any device, platform, or network at their home office or abroad. Remote desktop functions allow them to remotely access important files and share their screen for meetings and troubleshooting.

What are the requirements for remote administration?

Any computer with an Internet connection, TCP/IP or on a Local Area Network can be remotely administered. For non-malicious administration, the user must install or enable server software on the host system in order to be viewed.

What is a preferred security measure for remote access?

Virtual Private Networking (VPN) is often considered the best approach in securing trans-network communication.

Why is remote access important?

Remote access enables remote users to access files and other system resources on any devices or servers that are connected to the network at any time. This increases employee productivity and enables employees to better collaborate with colleagues around the world.

How to keep server room keys secure?

Make sure keys to the server room are kept secure. 2. Keep a record of everyone who has access to the server room. 3. Test the server room and locker keys. 4. Be sure that as few people as functionally possible have copies of these keys.

Is it important to secure your servers?

Securing each one of your servers is an important step towards total network security, and you should take some time to consider whether or not you're doing the best job you can to cover all your bases and keep your servers as secure as possible. It can be difficult to keep track of all of that information; doing all of ...

Is it hard to keep track of all of the information?

It can be difficult to keep track of all of that information; doing all of the research required to stay up to date with the latest best practice protocols, compliance regulations, and security threats is no small task. What's more, many organizations have poor processes in place when it comes to server security, ...

Can you tamper with start up processes?

Regular users should not be able to tamper with start-up processes, such as antivirus software and certain server scripts. Complete the sub-checklist tasks below, checking each item off as you go. 1. Ensure start-up processes are configured correctly. 2. Remove unnecessary startup processes.

When incorporating remote facility review into a larger remote auditing plan, should auditors note the areas they feel need?

When incorporating remote facility review into a larger remote auditing plan, auditors should note the areas they feel need to be captured through visual media like photos and video during document review. As part of this document review, auditors should note known or possible process problems, such as complaints, CAPAs, and deviations, so that they can be evaluated remotely.

Why are firms turning to remote audits?

For quality and compliance teams, the sudden workforce disruption is complicating—and often preventing— in-person quality audits led by qualified third parties. To avoid compounding delays due to canceled or deferred audits, firms are increasingly turning to remote or “virtual” audits to maintain their assurance activities until normal operations can resume.

What should be checked during a Wi-Fi audit?

Connectivity and A/V checks: If a live facility walkthrough is included in the audit, the route should be checked with devices that will be used to livestream the audit prior to audit day to ensure wi-fi dead spots don’t threaten the process. This guide offers more detail on this point during its discussion of facility reviews.

What is IT service preparation?

IT service preparation: The technical components of a remote audit can be fraught with IT issues that may not be apparent, such as firewalls, software limitations, and security risks. IT resources should be included in the planning process to identify potential problems in the project plan and make any necessary policy or technical adjustments. Both parties need to have the appropriate safety features in place.

How long should a remote closing meeting be?

A remote closing meeting shouldn’t be substantively different from that of an in- person audit. These should typically be scheduled a day or two following interviews—a timeframe that enables auditors to review their findings and meet as a team to gather preliminary audit results.

How long is a remote interview?

Barring technical difficulties, interview times should largely match those of a traditional audit: 30 to 90 minutes with program owners, 15 to 30 minutes with implementation personnel, and short er interviews with more general responsibilities.

How long should an audit be completed?

If an audit is typically completed in two days, for example, an additional half day may be needed to conduct the same activities remotely.

Why do you need a plan for remote work?

As your employees become more accustomed to remote working conditions and there is less strain on your network infrastructure, you’ll need a plan for reinstating less critical services. Stanger warns IT pros to look ahead and plan for the inevitable transition back to the office.

Why do remote workers need bandwidth?

To ensure business continuity, remote workers will need to access company systems and resources , making network bandwidth the first challenge. Most services will require additional bandwidth in order to function.

How to determine network throughput?

There are several considerations for determining how much network throughput you require: 1 How many employees do you have in the company? 2 What is the differential between employees who were working remotely before and who are now? 3 What will this new employee traffic look like? 4 How many employees will be using the virtual private network (VPN) to gain access to the network? 5 How many users are defined on the domain controller for remote access? 6 Can your cloud vendors accommodate increased traffic workload? 7 What costs will be associated with more bandwidth and cloud service costs? 8 Does your internet service provider (ISP) allow for temporary increases over the configured bandwidth to cover any temporary traffic increases? 9 What kinds of service distancing can we put in place so that current resources (e.g., VPN connections) won’t get overwhelmed until we expand available services?

Do you need to confirm that your network infrastructure has the capacity to accommodate increased remote workers?

You will need to confirm that your network infrastructure has the capacity to accommodate increased remote workers. James Stanger, CompTIA chief technology evangelist, cited the primary concern as capacity planning, and encourages IT pros to ask themselves, “What have you done to prepare your network?”

What is publicly accessible?

Publicly Accessible Sites/Resources via a web browser can be accessed from a personally owned device (POD) connected to the internet through a web browser. This includes but is not limited to Canvas, Gulfline, and Email.

What is restricted data?

Restricted Data: Information that if lost, disclosed, or inappropriately modified could cause significant impact to the confidentiality, integrity, availability of university operations, resources or constituent.

What is sensitive data?

Sensitive Data: Information that in isolation may not present any specific risk to the confidentiality, integrity or availability of university operations, resources, or constituents but if combined with other data could represent inappropriate risk.

Why is remote access important?

The security of remote access servers, such as VPN gateways and portal servers, is particularly important because they provide a way for external hosts to gain access to internal resources, as well as a secured, isolated telework environment for organization-issued, third-party-controlled, and BYOD client devices. In addition to permitting unauthorized access to enterprise resources and telework client devices, a compromised server could be used to eavesdrop on communications and manipulate them, as well as a “jumping off” point for attacking other hosts within the organization. Recommendations for general server security are available from NIST SP 800-123, Guide to General Server Security. Remote access servers should be kept fully patched, operated using an organization-defined security configuration baseline, and managed only from trusted hosts by authorized administrators.

Where should a remote access server be placed?

Intermediate remote access servers connect external hosts to internal resources, so they should usually be placed at the network perimeter. The server acts as a single point of entry to the network from the perimeter and enforces the telework security policy. If remote access is needed to a particular sub-network within the organization, there are generally two options: 1) place the remote access server at the edge of the sub-network, where the sub-network joins the full network; or 2) place it at the perimeter of the full network and use additional mechanisms to restrict the teleworkers to only be able to access the specified sub-network. The value of placing the remote access server at the network perimeter versus the sub-network perimeter differs for the four types of remote access methods:

What is the key component of controlling access to network communications and protecting their content?

major component of controlling access to network communications and protecting their content is the use of cryptography. At a minimum, any sensitive information passing over the Internet, wireless networks, and other untrusted networks should have its confidentiality and integrity preserved through use of cryptography. Federal agencies are required to use cryptographic algorithms that are NIST-approved and contained in FIPS-validated modules. The FIPS 140 specification, Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules, defines how cryptographic modules are validated.24 It is important to note that for a remote access system to be considered compliant to FIPS 140, both sides of the interaction must have passed FIPS 140 validation. Many remote access systems, such as SSL VPNs, support the use of remote access client software from other vendors, so there may be two or more distinct validation certificates for a particular remote access system.

What is a health check for telework?

After verifying the identity of a remote access user, organizations may choose to perform checks involving the telework client device to determine which internal resources the user should be permitted to access. These checks are sometimes called health, suitability, screening, or assessment checks. The most common way of implementing this is having the remote access server perform health checks on the teleworker's client device. These health checks usually require software on the user’s device that is controlled by the remote access server to verify compliance with certain requirements from the organization’s secure configuration baseline, such as the user’s antimalware software being up-to-date, the operating system being fully patched, and the user’s device being owned and controlled by the organization. Fewer health checks are generally available on mobile devices, but an important check usually provided is to determine if a mobile device has been rooted or jailbroken, which can have serious negative security implications.23

What is remote desktop access?

remote desktop access solution gives a teleworker the ability to remotely control a particular PC at the organization, most often the user’s own computer at the organization’s office, from a telework client device. The teleworker has keyboard and mouse control over the remote computer and sees that computer’s screen on the local telework client device’s screen. Remote desktop access allows the user to access all of the applications, data, and other resources that are normally available from their PC in the office. Figure 2-3 shows the basic remote desktop access architecture. A remote desktop access client program or web browser plug-in is installed on each telework client device, and it connects directly with the teleworker’s corresponding internal workstation on the organization’s internal network.

What is a portal in remote access?

A portal is a server that offers access to one or more applications through a single centralized interface. A teleworker uses a portal client on a telework client device to access the portal. Most portals are web-based—for them, the portal client is a regular web browser. Figure 2-2 shows the basic portal solution architecture. The application client software is installed on the portal server, and it communicates with application server software on servers within the organization. The portal server communicates securely with the portal client as needed; the exact nature of this depends on the type of portal solution in use, as discussed below.

Which framework is most pertinent for securing enterprise telework, remote access, and BYOD technologies?

This appendix lists the Cybersecurity Framework48 subcategories that are most pertinent for securing enterprise telework, remote access, and BYOD technologies. Next to each subcategory is an explanation of its implications particular to enterprise telework, remote access, and BYOD security.

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