Secure Remote Access & VPN Routers

Secure remote access means connecting to equipment on a site network from off-site over an encrypted link, without exposing that equipment to the open internet.

The old approach was to give a controller a public IP address and forward a port to it through the customer's firewall, which works but also means anyone scanning the internet can find the device and attempt to log in, which is how a great deal of building plant ends up compromised. Most IT departments will no longer allow it.

Secure remote access inverts the arrangement: a hardware device, usually called a Lock, sits on the site network and makes an outbound encrypted connection to a matching Key held by the engineer. Nothing inbound is required, so no ports are opened and no firewall rules are changed. Access is tied to the physical Key or a licensed Softkey rather than a shared password, so it can be issued per engineer and revoked immediately when someone leaves or a contract ends. In practice, it also gives you an audit trail of who connected and when.