ITS has provided a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) gateway to facilitate external access to university computers (e.g., work desktops) from local devices at another location (e.g., your home computer). This is often how people have remotely used files and software stored locally on office desktops.  The information technology (IT) landscape has changed over time, and there are better, more secure alternatives that provide the same or similar capabilities.  More of the community use laptops, and we have increasingly moved to cloud-based services, such as Microsoft 365, OneDrive, and other SaaS, which make files and software available from anywhere.  For a simple remote connection to access internal services such as local storage, AnyConnect, our virtual private network (VPN) service, is both robust and performant.  It lets you connect to the campus network as if you are located here. It has a higher encryption level and provides better security than RDP.  It is more compatible with Intune, Microsoft’s workstation management solution.  There are, of course, other solutions that exist for other use cases.

Please encourage those in your area to re-evaluate their reasons for using RDP and consider other options.  ITS staff in our Technology Support Center are available for consultation and assistance.

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