Are we approaching the day where remote access software will be meeting its grim reaper – the cloud? A few months ago, we compared LogMeIn and Teamviewer, two popular choices for accessing your PC when away from home or the office. How often do you need to access your PC remotely, though? Futurelawyer discussed this recently, pointing out that we now live in a cloud-based world, where we let third parties manage our data.
That got me to thinking about my usage of remote access software. While I’ve never been a heavy user, there once was a time where I would connect to my home PC about once a week, often to retrieve a file. Aside from playing with different remote access options, though, I can’t remember the last time I connected remotely. Thanks to my comprehensive backup solution, my documents get synced to Google Docs, and my files are backed up online to Carbonite. I can always reach them. Both my work and personal email are accessible via web apps.
Some people worry about the security and reliability of their information in the cloud. We’ve previously addressed these concerns as well. The bottom line – if you use a service that makes sure that you have local copies, your information will always be available to you. And, no offense, but if you’re not dedicated to keeping your system secure, your data is more secure in the hands of many online services than it is on your PC.
How has your usage of remote access tools changed over time?
Will Cloud Computing Make Remote Access Software Obsolete? [Futurelawyer]
Luke from iTwin says:
All is takes is a password, though. One password. And someone has access to your data in the cloud. All your data… That’s arguably (at least sometimes) easier than hacking in to someone’s PC that sits in their corporate office behind a secure firewall.
Human beings are not designed to remember loads of passwords. We use simple passwords. We re-use passwords. We similar variants of a password for various different services, (airmiles accounts, online banking accounts, loyalty card websites, email and Twitter accounts, etc etc). If a password gets stolen, we might not even realise it’s been stolen, (it’s a silent theft).
Remote access solutions that require physical tokens, (not just passwords) are going to stay around for a while longer. I’m talking about things like VPN Remote access or iTwin remote access solutions.
The first high profile cloud theft will damage cloud sync-n-storage’s reputation and delay full adoption. In fact, since people have different opinions and different trust levels, remote access solutions may ever be fully replaced. Managers of business with highly sensitive data (patents, biotech data, and other IP) will probably never rely fully on the cloud for hosting such data.
October 26, 2010 — 1:27 am
Evan Kline says:
Very good point, Luke. I’ve looked into VPN before, but not iTwin, and VPN at least I think is beyond the average consumer. I think the average consumer is going to use a remote access solution like LogMeIn or Teamviewer, which will have the same password risks as a cloud solution, if a simple password is used (which is why I use LastPass, with a long, complex password, to manage my passwords).
For a corporate situation, or for a real tech-savvy user, though, I agree – something requiring some other authentication would be the way to go. I don’t know the business end enough, though, to know if those users will be enough to keep a multitude of different remote access companies in business.
October 26, 2010 — 9:12 am
Kosmo @ The Soap Boxers says:
What about remote tech support? We use these tools quite a bit at work (massive company with users spread all over the place) – although I don’t use them much any more (because my role is more geared toward coordination these days.
On the home front, I use LogMeIn to do remote tech support for the in-laws. It adds a lot of clarity to the description of a problem.
October 26, 2010 — 11:54 am
Evan Kline says:
Good point, Kosmo. Using remote login for tech support won’t be going anywhere soon. I just wonder if the drop off in other uses will thin out some of the choices.
October 26, 2010 — 10:40 pm