Cloud VPN Alternative

Mobilize your workforce for fast and easy remote file server access, web browser-based access, and mobile access without VPN.

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Story #1 - Concurrent VPN Connections on the Firewall

Company A is an electrical construction company with two branches in the U.S. and a total of nearly 300 employees. The company has a local file server with about 4 TB of data replicated across the two branches using VMware. The company also has a significant number of field technicians and workers as it performs solar and electrical installations for oil and gas companies. The field workers relied on VPN to connect back to the on-premise file server and access files. As more employees work remotely, hundreds of VPN tunnels are used simultaneously on the Fortinet firewall. Towards the middle of 2020, the number of concurrently active VPN connections triples. The connection becomes slow and some employees complain about disconnections.

slow vpn more concurrent connections
slow vpn more concurrent connections

Story #2 - Move Dallas Office File Servers into Azure

An engineering firm has four offices in Texas. The main office is located in Dallas. Over 50% of the employees work from the Dallas office, while employees in the other offices access the file servers of the main Dallas office via a site-to-site VPN. There is a mesh SD-WAN network between the four offices, so logically all four offices are like an extended local area network. Since the pandemic started in 2020, most employees work from home. So if the Dallas office goes down (for example, if the building's power is interrupted), all four offices will not have access to the file servers, and it will be a classic single point of failure. The company plans to lift and shift the Dallas file servers to Azure data center. The Azure data center has better Internet bandwidth and power. The problem, however, is that employees working from home still have to use the existing corporate VPN to connect to the file servers. They would welcome a solution that provides a better VPN-free solution for remote access to file servers directly from Azure.

Are you solving the slow VPN problem?

VPN is not an ideal solution for a lot of remote workers

How many times has your support team been overwhelmed by VPN tickets? For most non-technical people, VPN is too complicated:

  • A user needs to establish a connection when the VPN is not always on.
  • A user needs to understand a file server, network share, and map a drive to a network share.
  • This process would have to be repeated every time the Internet connection or firewall malfunctions, costing the company time and money.

Without a solution, employees may often select an unauthorized third-party solution to facilitate productivity and efficiency. However, copying company documents and files to personal storage drives leads to data sprawl and compliance issues.

 

VPN is not a good solution. Use a Cloud VPN Alternative instead.

Are you looking to enhance the VPN with these capabilities?

Offline Editing

Offline Editing

A traditional VPN requires a stable and active connection to the corporate firewall to function. A disruption of the Internet or an interrupted connection to the firewall interrupts employees' work with unsaved files. With offline editing, remote workers can save and edit documents without an active connection and save the files asynchronously to a corporate file server once the connection is restored.

Always On

Always On

A firewall vendor usually provides VPN without an Always-on feature. Always-on VPN requires more infrastructure components such as identity server, authentication server, compatible client OS, etc. However, most modern cloud applications are always on, enabling offline access to files and folders, and allowing files to be saved on a local device before being synchronized with the online servers.

High Performance

High Performance

File server access is hardly high performance because when a VPN enables it, the file accessing communicates via SMB/CIFS protocol. First of all, the SMB protocol is not a data-streaming protocol with many requests and responses. If we can switch to HTTP-streaming for file transfer, performance will improve. Second, HTTP-based file transferring enables the traffic to take advantage of a global content delivery network, so HTTP is faster for cross-continent delivery.

business woman using laptop working from home without a VPN

Simplify Remote File Server Access Without a VPN

This white paper describes Gladinet Triofox, which enables businesses to quickly provide secure remote access and secure file sharing to local file servers without using a VPN and without synchronizing to external storage services such as Office 365, Dropbox, or Box.

As more businesses follow CDC guidelines for social distancing during a global pandemic, interest is growing in faster ways to facilitate work from home without compromising data privacy, security, or compliance.

Virtual Private Network (VPN) has been the default method for remote file access. However, VPN has many problems. Employees were looking for a solution that combined the security of a file server and the ease of use of a third-party application like Dropbox into a single end-to-end solution.

Modernizing Windows File Server for Cloud VPN Alternative

Triofox empowers traditional file servers with new remote web access, file sharing & mobile application capabilities. It adds cloud mobility features while retaining the old security safeguards, permission controls, and data ownership. The solution also allows you to share files and folders with existing permissions!

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Triofox Solution

Triofox is a self-hosted solution that adds secure remote access and file sharing, disaster prevention and recovery, to file servers on-premises with easy cloud migration to private cloud storage. It is the real cloud file server solution you have been looking for to resolve slow VPN issues!

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Remote Access

Triofox connects local file servers and the Cloud for secure remote access without using a VPN.

Disaster Recovery

Triofox turns a private cloud storage account into a central cloud file repository with version control, file change history, and audit tracing to provide business continuity for file servers on-premises.

Mobile Sharing

Triofox adds secure mobile file sharing from a web browser or a mobile application.

Cloud Mobility

The solution combines the file server's security protection with web-based mobile accessing methods to increase remote workers' productivity.

Mapped Drive Power + Web Simplicity + File Server Security

Triofox is a web server that accepts file requests from client agents over the HTTPS/SSL protocol. These requests are translated to Active Directory and File Server network share access protected by NTFS permissions. The file is sent back to the client agents via HTTPS/SSL when all permission checks have passed. Triofox uses this approach to combine the power of a mapped drive with the simplicity of web browsing and the security of a file server!

Triofox Web Server

1. Triofox Web Server

Triofox creates a web server front-end that accepts client agent requests from remote Windows, Mac, web browser, iOS, and Android devices. The client agents provide drive mapping functionality.

Agents Send File Requests

2. Agents Send File Requests

Client agents send HTTPS/SSL requests to the Triofox server. The Triofox server can log the requests for auditing purposes and also coordinate file access and sharing demands.

Active Directory Integration

3. Active Directory Integration

Triofox checks the Active Directory and NTFS permissions to see if the file requests are allowed. After that, the file requests are satisfied and returned to the client agents via HTTPS/SSL.

Triofox provides VPN-less file server access via HTTPS

Looking for an easy-to-use solution?

Easy-to-use is the key. It means productivity

Simple User Interface

Simple always-on drive letter mapped to your on-premise file server without glitch.

Reduce Costs

It reduces the costs of VPN (virtual private network) support.

Best of Both Worlds

Triofox combines the security and control of Windows file servers with the ease of use and productivity of the cloud.

Easy-to-use is the key. It means productivity

Easy Setup

The strategy for migrating and configuring permissions is more straightforward than SharePoint, Dropbox, or Google Drive - inherit it directly from the file server.

Inherit Permissions

Combines NTFS permissions, Active Directory users, and drive mappings with remote access from any device.

On-Premise Solution

Maintains data privacy by providing the option to keep data on-premises in traditional file server shares.

The Secure File Sharing with Private Storage Benefits!

Triofox eliminates the common drawbacks of traditional file server access and cloud file sharing solutions, combining both strengths with the following benefits.

Guarantee Data Privacy

Businesses can address data privacy concerns by using Triofox to provide access to internal file servers. It’s common to talk about replacing existing file servers with cloud solutions to reduce costs and administrative overhead, and Triofox can facilitate that in any private cloud. Still, Triofox offers the unique option of using existing file servers to replace cloud file sharing!

Mobile Access to File Servers

Simplify remote access to file shares with familiar interfaces on any computer or device. Windows and Mac desktops natively display mapped drives in Explorer and Finder. Users have the same experience on iOS devices like iPhones and iPads, Android devices and popular web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Internet Explorer.

Increase Productivity

Provide an always-on mapped drive that works anywhere, on any device, and allows mobile users to easily access internal file shares or cloud file servers. Turn Windows file server network shares and shared drives into online shared folders protected by the same security measures as those from on-premise file servers and governed by the same Active Directory.

Enhance Data Security

Files are secured at rest and in transit with military-grade encryption, secure connections, and more. Automatically use existing users and permissions to save setup time and money. When files and folders can continue to stay-in-place with the Windows file servers, the security parameters are smaller and more straightforward than public online sharing services, and it's much easier to pass compliance tests.

Simplify File Share Access

Easily collaborate with business partners by providing them with access to a limited set of internal files or folders. Share files with non-AD users while maintaining administrative control. Simplify multi-site collaboration with automatic version control and file locking. Mobile workers see the same content in the online shared folder as if it came from an internal mapped drive.

On-Demand Synchronization

Mapped drives display the directory structure but delay downloads until a file is accessed to reduce bandwidth usage and endpoint storage consumption. Secure web links have also been generated for shared folders and files, allowing users to access them in a web browser-based file manager. Files are not actively downloaded or viewed (as in secure-data-room) until users generate access intentions.

Reduce Costs with a Simple VPN Alternative

Eliminate the overhead and support tickets commonly associated with VPN file sharing, Always On VPN, or Direct Access. Automatically use existing users and permissions to save setup time and money. With the Triofox server's help, the internal shared drive has new online folder representations over HTTPS (SSL) protocols and with RESTful APIs for client agents and mobile applications.

Branded File Sharing Solution

Triofox provides a branded platform that makes it easy to build a private online file sharing solution based on infrastructure from Amazon, Windows Azure, or Google Cloud. Triofox enables you to brand the Web portal, Windows, and MAC clients, and mobile clients.

Simplify Management

Manage users, access controls, and storage centrally. IT can easily track where data is located, who has access, and how it is shared. A centralized, web-based management portal provides a "single-pane-of-glass" style management console for managing shared folders and shared files, as well as other objects in the management scope.

On-Premises Alternative to Dropbox and SharePoint

Triofox has the flexibility to provide an on-premises alternative to Dropbox, OneDrive, and SharePoint by leveraging existing file servers. You can modernize your file server to the point where it is equivalent to those of public domains from the perspective of the online file sharing solution. At the same time, the solution retains all the benefits of file server security and data ownership.

Centrally Manage Granular Folder Permissions

For complete control and visibility, you can manage permissions from the file server that was their source or natively with Triofox. Businesses and their employees accumulate the NTFS permission structure over years of active use and practice. These NTFS permissions are inherited by Triofox and continue to control access to online folder sharing.

Maintain Compliance

Manage users, access controls, and storage centrally. Administrators can perform audits for GDPR and HIPAA compliance or track all file changes. It's so much easier to pass compliance tests when both Triofox servers and Windows servers IT infrastructure are under your supervision and control.

Increase the productivity of your mobile workforce!

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