Implementation of Citrix Remote Access Gateway ensures secure remote access to DTEK's corporate resources

DTEK aimed to upgrade its outdated system for providing remote access to non-domain users, as support for Microsoft’s UAG proxy server was coming to an end. Furthermore, the existing solution lacked the ability to pre-authorise clients via the SSL protocol due to excessive load on the system, and the solution itself was based on the outdated Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system.

When selecting a solution for DTEK, the following factors were particularly important

The solution’s inclusion in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for ADC:

• Centralized identity management and access control
• Access provisioning based on Active Directory
• 24/7 vendor support with the ability to submit support cases
• Mobile access support
• Management of HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP, TCP, and UDP protocols for controlling different types of network traffic

Following an analysis of the options, the MODUS X team selected Citrix ADC for deployment within DTEK’s infrastructure, which was implemented over a period of three months.

Every day, up to 2,000 company employees, as well as staff from contractors and call centres using non-corporate devices, actively use the system, demonstrating a high level of engagement and the solution’s reliability. The solution has high throughput, which effectively supports a large number of concurrent sessions without any loss of productivity or efficiency. The new solution has demonstrated a high level of security when connecting from unmanaged, non-domain-joined devices, ensuring that such devices are checked prior to connection, taking into account the linking of a unique user identifier and their device in each specific session.

Overall, the Citrix ADC remote access solution offers a number of benefits for companies of all sizes and with varying requirements for accessing business applications, namely:

• Flexible working: staff can work from any device, regardless of their domain affiliation, enabling them to maintain a high level of productivity even in unpredictable situations.

• Security and access control: IT teams gain additional capabilities to protect corporate data and control access to it from any device: protection against DDoS attacks, and integration with external multi-factor authentication systems (Microsoft Entra, Okta, Cisco VSA) to ensure that only authorised users can access the data.

• Checking that up-to-date antivirus software and OS updates are in place to meet information security requirements: If these requirements are not met, access to applications will be denied, providing an additional layer of protection against potential threats and malicious actors. This helps maintain high security standards and ensures that all devices interacting with corporate systems are securely protected and up to date.

• Business continuity: using standard corporate infrastructure to set up remote access enables business continuity to be maintained without the need to implement additional tools or devices, or to set up geo-redundancy and load balancing to ensure application resilience and performance, etc.

• System scalability: as the number of users grows, the system scales effectively, ensuring stable service operation even when a large number of users are connected simultaneously, whilst maintaining the required internet access speed.

• Speed of onboarding new users: thanks to integration with Microsoft Active Directory, the system allows new users to be onboarded by adding them to the relevant access groups, which is a key advantage in the context of dynamic growth or when the team needs to be expanded quickly.

The solution currently enables users to connect to the company’s SharePoint corporate portals, email and terminal farms. In addition, DTEK actively utilises the reverse proxy functionality within Citrix ADC, which allows users to connect to authorised resources without the need for re-authentication. This feature simplifies access to the necessary tools and data, optimising workflows and improving overall user productivity.