Mobilize your workforce for fast and easy remote file server access, web browser-based access, and mobile access without VPN.
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.
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.
How many times has your support team been overwhelmed by VPN tickets? For most non-technical people, VPN is too complicated:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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!
Triofox connects local file servers and the Cloud for secure remote access without using a VPN.
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.
Triofox adds secure mobile file sharing from a web browser or a mobile application.
The solution combines the file server's security protection with web-based mobile accessing methods to increase remote workers' productivity.
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 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.
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.
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.
Simple always-on drive letter mapped to your on-premise file server without glitch.
It reduces the costs of VPN (virtual private network) support.
Triofox combines the security and control of Windows file servers with the ease of use and productivity of the cloud.
The strategy for migrating and configuring permissions is more straightforward than SharePoint, Dropbox, or Google Drive - inherit it directly from the file server.
Combines NTFS permissions, Active Directory users, and drive mappings with remote access from any device.
Maintains data privacy by providing the option to keep data on-premises in traditional file server shares.
Triofox eliminates the common drawbacks of traditional file server access and cloud file sharing solutions, combining both strengths with the following benefits.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.