Windows Server 2008 Remote Access and Network Access Protection

  • 7/15/2011
Contents
In this chapter from MCITP Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-646): Windows Server 2008 Server Administrator (2nd Edition) you will learn how to configure and deploy NAP and the various methods that are available to deal with noncompliant computers. You will also learn how to plan and deploy Windows Server 2008 R2 remote access services to ensure that your organization’s clients can connect to your internal resources no matter where in the world they are.

You can use VPNs to allow remote users to connect to your organization’s internal network resources, whether they are using a hotel wireless hotspot in Gundagai or are connecting through an ADSL connection in Canberra. When you plan how to provision VPN access, you need to take into account a host of factors. You need to know how your organization’s external firewall will be configured, the operating system used by the client, and the types of resources that remote clients will need to access.

Network Access Protection (NAP) allows you to restrict network access on the basis of client health. Put simply, NAP allows you to enforce a rule that if the client is not up to date with patches and antivirus definitions, you can block it from getting full access to the network. In this chapter, you will learn how to configure and deploy NAP and the various methods that are available to deal with noncompliant computers. You will also learn how to plan and deploy Windows Server 2008 R2 remote access services to ensure that your organization’s clients can connect to your internal resources no matter where in the world they are.

Exam objectives in this chapter:

  • Plan infrastructure services server roles.

  • Monitor and maintain security and policies.

Lessons in this chapter:

  • Lesson 1: Managing Remote Access

  • Lesson 2: Firewalls and Network Access Protection

Before You Begin

To complete the exercises in the practice in this chapter, you need to have done the following:

  • Complete the setup tasks outlined in Appendix A, “Setup Instructions for Windows Server 2008 R2.”

    No additional configuration is required for this chapter.

REAL WORLD

Orin Thomas

Traditional models of networks and firewalls had all the bad stuff “out there” and all the safe stuff “in here.” Today, however, the internal network can be as hostile an environment as the Internet. In the past, every computer that connected to the network was stationary, and very few people took their workstations home with them. But today, most computers sold are laptops, and increasing numbers of people take their primary computer with them when they leave the office for the day. Unfortunately, once people take their computers out of the protected glasshouse that is your internal network, all sorts of bad things can happen to them. Malware, which might have been blocked by the external firewall, will be inadvertently downloaded on the home ADSL connection. Computers that you were able to keep completely healthy when they were under your control are now exposed on a daily basis to all manner of Internet nasties. The biggest problem is that after those computers go out of your safe environment, they are brought back into work the next day and are plugged into your organizational network. Technologies such as Windows Firewall with Advanced Security and NAP go some distance toward protecting hosts on your internal network from whatever “the cat drags in” on a regular basis when the people you work with bring their computers back from home. When you plan your organizational security strategy, don’t assume that hosts that have a local IP address are any safer than hosts with an Internet IP address unless they’ve gone through some process, such as NAP, to provide evidence that they are secure.

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This chapter is from the book