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NFC Vault : File Server Remote Access without a VPN

Have you spent hours troubleshooting VPN connections? Have both your staff and IT support team lost productivity due to downed VPN connections? VPNs are complicated; there is a better way!

Story #1 - Concurrent VPN connections tripled

An electrical company used a traditional VPN for its field technicians, while most office workers used a local corporate network to access file servers. Following the pandemic, many office workers are moving to work from home as well. Toward the middle of 2020, the number of concurrently active VPN connections on the company's Fortinet firewall tripled. Remote workers were experiencing dropped connections and had to troubleshoot the slow VPN with dropped connections issue.

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Story #2 - File Server Offline Access of construction site trailers.

An engineering firm has dedicated connections such as VPN and Remote Desktop for network access. In the construction industry, most employees work from the road and many work from job site trailers. The job sites typically do not have a stable Wi-Fi connection, but both VPN and Remote Desktop rely on maintaining active connections with the corporate firewall for remote file access. Many field technicians have had to synchronize folders the nights before they travel to job sites. They look for a solution that provides offline access to the file server. This way, folders are picked up before they even enter the job site, and any changes made to the files are synced back to the company's file servers when they have a good Internet connection

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Story #3 - Cross-Continent File Server Access

A design firm has offices worldwide, including headquarters in London and branch offices in Australia and North America. To provide better remote file server access, the company moved the IT infrastructure to a data center in the UK. Access speed for local staff in the UK is good. However, remote employees in Australia and North America complained about slow file server access over a VPN. The company is looking for a solution to speed up cross-continent file delivery with a traditional mapped drive. The company would like to try if a solution can provide file server access over a global content delivery network to speed up cross-continent access.

Why does VPN cost your time and money?

The main reason is that VPN is a complex solution that effectively extends your corporate network to an external employee's desktop computer. Regardless of how tech-savvy they are, your remote workers need to understand terms like network, file server, mapped drives, VPN Access Client. Not to mention the numerous steps involved in establishing VPN connections. When VPN connections drop, you need to try to understand the underlying technologies, such as how to overcome corporate firewalls and the many different network protocols, as well as the possible reasons for the drop. It's not uncommon for your employees to give up and then call tech support. Both spend time outside of work troubleshooting VPN issues.

Lift-and-shift has added to the slow VPN problems.

If you are dealing with VPN issues or VPN tickets, do you wish accessing your file servers was as easy as the user experience offered by cloud storage tools like those from Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive?

However, you need to store files on your file server without resorting to other cloud solutions. You want an on-premises VPN-like solution, but one that addresses the issue of slowness and has advanced features.

Would you like to extend the VPN with these features?
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Offline Editing

A traditional VPN requires a stable and active connection to the corporate firewall to function. A disruption of the Internet or an interrupted connection to the firewall interrupts employees' work with unsaved files. With offline editing, remote workers can save and edit documents without an active connection and save the files asynchronously to a corporate file server once the connection is restored.

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Always On

A firewall provider typically offers VPN without an always-on feature. Always-on VPN requires more infrastructure components, such as an identity server, an authentication server, a compatible client OS, etc. However, most modern cloud applications are always-on, allow offline access to files and folders, and allow files to be stored on a local device before being synchronized with the online servers.

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High Performance

Accessing file servers is hardly high performance, because when a VPN allows it, file access communicates via the SMB/CIFS protocol. First of all, the SMB protocol is not a data streaming protocol with many requests and responses. If we can switch to HTTP streaming for file transfer, performance will improve. Second, HTTP-based file transfer traffic can take advantage of a global content delivery network, so HTTP is faster for cross-continent transfer.

SECURE AND MOBILE REMOTE ACCESS TO FILE SERVER SHARES WITHOUT A VPN


It is easy to set up, seamless to use, and enhance your file server mobility immediately!

NFC Vault enables public and private Windows file sharing without a VPN. Empower remote workers and home workers with a simple and secure file server access solution from anywhere using any device.

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

Secure remote access refers to security policies or strategies to protect sensitive data transmissions when accessing devices or networks not controlled by the organization.

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Remote Access Illustration

Why Secure Remote Access Matters

With the blossoming of Internet-connected devices and digital processes in the modern work environment, many organizations are no longer tied to a single location. Employees can now access corporate resources and networks from a variety of devices and locations.

While this offers many benefits to businesses and their employees, it also makes traditional data security measures obsolete. Old concepts of access control via endpoints and passwords fall short in remote environments because they rely on an employee's physical presence in the office with a set of pre-secured devices.

On the other hand, secure remote access ensures that anyone accessing your file server or network remotely is authenticated and using a secure internet connection. It's basically another layer of security between your users (or employees) and your data. Before a user can connect to your file server, the application that runs a secure remote access policy might check the following:

  • Security: Confirms that connected systems have updated antivirus and firewall, that all patches are present, and that no dangerous processes are running.
  • Single Sign-On (SSO) measures: Authenticated users can access certain resources with their initial login credentials.
  • NTFS Permissions: Existing permissions on your file server will be applied to remote users.

Get Secure Remote Access for Your File Server

NFC Vault simplifies remote access to your Windows file servers by providing a clean, secure interface for your remote workers. The program does not remove files or data from your file server. Instead, it implements a robust, secure remote access policy that allows your employees to securely access the resources they need. With NFC Vault, you'll enjoy a secure solution combined with the ease of use of cloud mobility

NFC Vault Solution

Cloud Migration

NFC Vault sets up a hybrid deployment between on-premises file servers and cloud storage that can be seamlessly converted to a cloud-only deployment

Mobile Access

NFC Vault leverages cloud storage for secure mobile file sharing via a web browser or mobile app

Web Access

Accessing files and folders directly from a web browser is as interactive as from a desktop drive.

Remote Access

NFC Vault connects file servers and cloud storage for secure remote access without VPN.

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Single Sign-On and Two-Factor Authentication

NFC Vault integrates with ADFS, Azure AD and other SAML 2.0 compliant identity services. In addition, 2-factor authentication is enabled and enforced for all users, providing an additional layer of security. Once authenticated in NFC Vault, your users will have the same access to your company's file servers when working from home or remotely as they do in the office.

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Endpoint Encryption

The platform, when enabled, can encrypt all data on all endpoints, ensuring that your most sensitive information never leaves a secure environment, no matter where your employees access it.

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Advanced User Controls

The solution allows you to take existing user and role permissions from your file server and easily apply them to your remote employees' devices. It also allows users to simplify their login processes with Active Directory.

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Familiar User Interface

From a mapped drive on Windows Explorer to a mounted volume on macOS to file locking, web browser access, and mobile app access, NFC Vault is an all-in-one access solution that provides end users with seamless drive mapping

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Bussiness Continuity

Additional features include version control, audit trace, file change log report, and cloud backup. These features improve your file server's performance for business continuity, regulatory compliance, and a better fit for cloud mobility in the future!

Choose Fast, Secure Deployment with NFC Vault

As business processes become less dependent on or tied to a physical location, data security and remote access have become central to operations. Secure remote access is just one of the many benefits NFC Vault offers to businesses looking for a fast solution to support their mobile workforce