Mike:
Heya; fortunately, your IT guys are wrong about this. VNC
is simply a "remote desktop" application, not a "Virtual Private
Network" application. Unlike the latter (in which a remote PC
does "traverse your firewall" and effectively becomes part of the
LAN), a "remote desktop" connection cannot be used to transfer
viruses, worms or other malware from the Viewer to the Server PC.
Of course, once someone has remote control of your PC,
they can easily/mistakingly cause viruses or malware to become
installed -- just like any other other -- but that's the whole
point of having good anti-virus software on the PC to begin with.
Lastly, VNC does allow you to restrict connections, so that
they will only be accepted from specific Internet addresses. If
you always know where allowed connections come from, you can use
this capability to control access more securely. All versions of
VNC support this capability, even the free ones.
hope that helps,
Scott
We are behind a firewall, but want to get VNC to allow consultants we
trust to have remote access to our computers (and vice versa). Past
posts to this list convinced me that opening a port in the firewall for
specific users is a secure activity, but our IT guys are now saying that
it doesn't necessarily protect our systems from worms or viruses that
may already inhabit the trusted user's computers.
Does anyone have a response to this? It seems logical. Would we want
to require that any remote user that traverses our firewall via VNC have
an acceptable virus scan before doing so? Are there particular VNC
products that would be best for both us and our clients? Can our
clients use the free version?
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