Remote Desktop access is necessary as it offers convenient access for administration and support. But then, opening a port is a sure way to attract attackers, who are always scanning for misconfigurations or other loopholes that can give them access to a system.
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Most teams implement RDP security measures, but the basic ones aren’t enough, and many teams struggle to keep pace with evolving attack patterns. This calls for a more advanced security tool like TSplus Advanced Security, as it implements a variety of crucial protection measures within a single dashboard. It helps teams avoid spending weeks tightening defenses, and you can use it to harden your RDP security within an hour.
What Is TSplus Advanced Security?
TSplus Advanced Security is a tool that has been created specifically to simplify RDP hardening while providing strong and practical protection. Unlike traditional approaches like individually configuring firewalls and editing group policies, it brings the key features you need into one dashboard.
From there, it will block malicious attempts using various techniques like IP blocking, brute-force protection, predictive behavioral detection, and ransomware detection and reaction.
How to Secure Your RDP Ports in Under an Hour
Hardening RDP security with the right approach means that instead of several days, you only need about an hour.
Install and run the tool
The security tool makes the setup process straightforward as everything is grouped into a single suite. Download the installer, and TSplus will guide you through a short configuration flow. You don’t even need extensive Windows Server expertise, and there’s no long list of prerequisites.
When setting up controls, you’ll have a dashboard that gives you access to all security tools. You’ll also get crucial reports and alerts in the same dashboard.
Turn on brute-force protection
Immediately a server goes online, automated bots start looking for weak passwords through brute-force attacks. TSplus makes it easy to deal with these through an automated blocker that monitors all failed login attempts. It then stops these attempts before the attacker can guess the right password. Enabling this feature only takes a moment, and you can set the threshold for the number of attempts.
Enable geo-blocking
One of the easiest ways to reduce unwanted traffic is to set the regions from which connections are allowed or blocked. TSplus Advanced Security allows you to use geo-blocking and set it to the countries where your organization actually operates. All connections from other regions are automatically blocked before they can even get a chance to attempt a login..
Set IP filtering rules (Hacker IP protection)
While geo-blocking specifies regions, IP filtering lets you determine the individual connections that can or cannot access your server. If you have trusted office locations, partner networks, or static IPs assigned to your team, you can add them to your allow list. After that, only these IP addresses can access the server, which significantly limits the outsider threat.
Besides that, TSplus Advanced Security automatically blocks malicious IP addresses. The information is provided by the community of Advanced Security users and automatically blocks more than 368 million threats daily.
Activate Ransomware Protection
In most cases, RDP attacks lead to ransomware attacks. TSplus has a ransomware protection engine that monitors suspicious behavior like random file encryption or system file modifications.
Enabling it is important as it immediately isolates suspicious connections to prevent further damage and alerts you immediately.
Control Access With Time-Based Rules, Trusted Devices, and Granular Permissions
TSplus lets you customize the rules based on your organization’s actual working patterns. For example, you can set time-based access rules. These will mean specific users or groups can only access the system during the times and days you've set for them. You can also restrict their access to the machines that you've approved as meeting required security standards. You can even go a step further and give users access permissions based on what they actually need to do in the system.
Check the live dashboard
Before you wrap up everything, take a few minutes and review everything using the TSplus live dashboard. This dashboard is like a bird's-eye view of all user activity and the controls you've put in place. It will help you confirm that you’ve set up all crucial features and that your polices are working exactly as intended.
