At this time of year, it's nice to be able to think about going home for a few days, or to some idyllic setting away from winter cold and snow. Unfortunately, IT professionals don't always have those options. But that is changing as remote management solutions make it increasingly possible to let technologists warm their hands before the home fires rather than by the heat of an equipment rack.

The evolution of VPN technology has given administrators a broader foundation of secure connectivity, with finer degrees of control. SSL VPN, for example, is natively specific to Web applications, inherently enabling application-specific granularity of access. This specificity can be extended to non-Web applications as well (a concept known as "intermediation"). In the past, this may have been a drawback when the network-wide connectivity of IPSec was preferred, but the evolution of SSL VPN intermediation has reached the point where this is not an issue with many of today's leading SSL VPN solutions, such as those from Aventail, Citrix and Juniper Networks.

Increased focus on data protection, information privacy, and insider risks mean that the enforcement of information security measures on remote connectivity has become increasingly significant. Solutions such as Permeo's Base5 present an interesting differentiation of efficient options. For those familiar with SOCKS, the Permeo Base5 architecture centralizes both intermediation and policy management functionality at the session layer (Layer 5 of the ISO network stack, hence the product name). This natively enables the use of a wide range of connectivity as well as security options, since it limits requirements for application- or target-specific intermediation.

Remote support for GUI-intensive environments such as PCs often requires the ability to interact with the local desktop itself. This is where remote desktop tools from Symantec's pcAnywhere, DameWare, and the various flavors of virtual network computing (VNC), to Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and EMC's VMware play a role. Unless configured for the purpose, however, these tools may not incorporate the level of secure access management required. This is where solutions such as Citrix GoToAssist can be helpful. The Citrix solution leverages the ASP model and mediates an indirect connection to support targets, which reduces the exposure risk and increases access control options.

Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.