What’s your plan if all your employees need to work from home?
Many organizations that use Citrix technologies are already prepared for such an event. Their mobile-ready workforces have laptops and remote access to corporate apps and docs that are hosted on Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and to SaaS apps and internal web apps via Citrix Secure Workspace Access.
But what about employees who rely on PCs in the office, with local apps, documents, and internal resources?
One option is to enable VPN access for these employees and allow them to RDP to their workstation PC. But providing VPN access from untrusted home PCs is a risk. There could be malware on the home PC that can spread over the network. Or a keystroke logger could be capturing everything that’s viewed or typed on the home device. On top of that, opening the internal network to any remote employee, anywhere, presents additional risk many organizations won’t want to take.
For Citrix customers with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Advanced/Premium or Citrix Workspace Premium Plus, there’s a built-in feature called Remote PC Access. This option allows any domain-joined internal PC to become securely accessible to remote employees without a VPN. Plus IT can enforce Multi Factor Authentication to further protect from malware stealing passwords.
The Remote PC Access feature has been available since 2016 and is enabled on more than 1 million corporate PCs around the world. The VDA that is normally running inside a VDI image gets installed on a physical PC. That PC then needs to be enrolled in the machine catalog.
The user experience is the same as a Citrix user connecting to StoreFront or Workspace in Citrix Cloud. Remote PC Access will work with on-prem or Citrix Cloud, though Citrix Cloud offers the advantage of managing and scaling the control plane with no infrastructure.
Learn more about Remote PC Access and how it can help your employees work effectively anywhere. Find out how to enable it for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, and review this helpful guide to Remote PC Access from Citrix CTA Rory Monaghan.
Finally, download our free white paper, Guidelines for Maintaining Business Continuity for Your Organization, to learn best practices for a complete business continuity strategy and how Citrix technologies provide secure access to apps and data on any device, over any network or cloud. And check out our business continuity overview on Citrix Tech Zone.
