At ST-FOUR we have embraced remote working since 2015 so we know a bit about it! So in this post, we will be talking about file access, especially mapped drives.
If you haven’t moved all your files to OneDrive/Teams/GoogleDrive/GAFE etc. then, like most of the working population worldwide, you are using mapped drives.
Now there is nothing wrong with mapped drives (despite what the cloud resellers will tell you!) they are fast, easy to manage, work with file links are easy to assign rights and a host of other positives but what they are NOT good at is giving you access to files outside of your normal office working environment.
So what’s the problem, file access is easy, right?
There are a host of options for dealing with this issue (and hopefully your approach does not involve emailing files to each other!) however first option most organisations choose and one of the oldest is the Virtual Private Network or VPN for short. VPNs came about back in the mid ’90s and were originally designed for securely connecting geographically separated offices over the internet without resorting to an exorbitantly expensive private internet links (known as a Site to Site VPN) however a client to site VPN soon arrived which allowed mobile laptop and home PC users to use their device as if they were part of the office network, so access to Files, Network Applications, Printing, etc
Great, so all we need is a VPN?
The ironic reality is that nowadays the majority of us don’t use Network Applications anymore they have all been upgraded to Web Applications which are accessible from anywhere, printing although still popular in the Accounting and Legal professions has drastically reduced in most other industries in favour of PDF, Office Doc and Online Content which is much more portable and kills far fewer trees so really the only thing we need a VPN for is to access our mapped drive files.
So is the VPN a bad thing? Well yes and no, VPN’s are popular and relatively easy to set up but there are several fatal drawbacks:
- Most VPNs limit the number of concurrent connections so it’s easy to run out.
- Non-IT users often find VPNs hard to use and when VPN’s fail fixing them can be a time-consuming task
- VPNs don’t work if a users home network has the same network range as the office (this happens more often than you would think!)
OK, so VPN’s aren’t great, we can still copy a file to each other!
So we said earlier that emailing files to each other was a bad thing, the same can be applied to putting files on a USB, copying them locally to your laptop and, yes, syncing files to the cloud for the following reasons:
- Backup: USB pens fail, Laptops break and yes, so do cloud services and NONE, yes, NONE of these options has a built-in backup (check your Microsoft, Google, Dropbox, etc agreement if you don’t believe me) so if your device/service fails you lose everything
- Security: There is a reason we centralise files on a secure managed platform with firewalls, anti-virus and backups, to keep then secure, laptops get hacked, USB pens get lost and stolen.
- Management: It’s just easier to manage files when they are centralised, having files managed by users on devices or unmanaged cloud services can open up security holes, file rights violations and version conflicts (where 2 or more users edit the same file on their devices and inadvertently create several different versions)
OK, ST-FOUR, if you’re so clever what’s the answer?
So, you’re asking, how can I still get access to my mapped drives without using a VPN and without uploading all my files to a cloud service, the answer is by using a web-based file proxy, basically a web service that sits securely on your network and allows remote users to access their mapped drives through a web browser, something like this:
Condrey Corporation develops a remote access product Aurora, that allows simple, lightweight remote access to Windows network file shares using a browser, it’s a lost cost, easy to administrate alternative to using VPNs (or worse!) and, even better, if you are currently a Condrey product user (Native Condrey or Micro Focus) Condrey are making Aurora available free to use during this Crisis.
Simple to use, fast and easy to manage; Aurora lets authorised users share resources on your local Windows network file system through an intuitive web browser interface – ideal for effortlessly sharing research, training materials, documents, and other critical resources across multiple remote locations. This capability can be extended to sharing resources with external users through Aurora.Ext, the online guest portal for secure network access.
For an online demo of Aurora, please use the link below which will show you what the product can do, what the interface looks like and simple steps to install and get working in your environment.