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Customer Success Story
Nick Temple, E-Commerce Consultant
http://www.nicktemple.com
- Industry: Consulting
- Products: SecureCRT®
and SecureFX®
- Summary: With SecureCRT and SecureFX for remote access
and file transfer, this e-commerce consultant can quickly respond to
customer needs from the road or his office, while maintaining the security
of their systems and data.
Organization
Nick Temple provides application development and e-commerce consulting
services to clients throughout the United States, primarily to financial
sector companies. Temple often works remotely, developing on his clients'
servers from his office or on the road.
Challenge
As a consultant with geographically dispersed clients, Temple needs reliable,
proven software to securely administer client servers from his office
or from the road. To effectively serve his customers, Temple needs to
securely access and control his clients' machines from his office or laptop
when on the road. He also needs to script tasks, for example, to let a
trusted support person restart selected services. "My clients place
a lot of trust in me to not expose their sensitive customer data, in particular,
credit card numbers and other financial data. Security is an absolute
necessity. And of course, sending passwords in clear text over the internet
is just a bad idea," said Temple.
Solution
Using SecureCRT and SecureFX, Temple benefits from Secure Shell remote
shell access, data tunneling (port forwarding), and file transfer. He
chose SecureCRT and SecureFX because they seemed to be a Windows client
standard. With three to four years experience with VanDyke products, Temple
felt comfortable using them to access customers' sensitive resources and
data.
"My clients place a lot of trust in me to not expose
their sensitive customer data, in particular, credit card numbers and
other financial data. Security is an absolute necessity. And of course,
sending passwords in clear text over the internet is just a bad idea."
– Nick Temple, E-commerce consultant
SecureCRT has also served Temple well in the past. "Before SecureFX,
I port forwarded passive FTP connections over the SecureCRT client. I'm
sure that the free versions work as well — that's what I use for
the servers, as it's built into Linux — but SecureCRT is feature-rich,
easy to use, and easily scriptable... I use SecureCRT to remotely administer
all our servers, allowing me to do critical maintenance wherever I am."
He also uses SecureCRT to remotely administer customer databases.
Temple develops on his clients' remote servers that are behind
a firewall and not directly connected to the internet. He needs
to access a command shell, upload and download files, and test HTTP.
Temple gets this done using SecureCRT. With a Secure Shell client
like SecureCRT, he can connect to the server, and then create an
encrypted tunnel to connect to any remote machine behind the firewall.
Temple's setup generally has only the standard Secure Shell port open
on the firewall. He connects to the firewall and then port forwards 22
on the remote machine locally to another port, for example, to 300. This
creates the tunnel. He then connects SecureCRT to port 300, which gives
him direct access to the remote machine. He can then port forward selected
services such as web access (HTTP) to the local machine, for example,
for remote testing on development servers. Rz/sz software is installed
on the UNIX server machines for remote downloads.
"This setup allows me to work on any machine from my laptop
or from my office via a 'Secure Shell VPN'," said Temple. "I'm
not sure I could function without it, and definitely not at the
level of productivity required. Other setups may work, but this
allows completely encrypted traffic, even over the remote LAN."
SecureCRT and SecureFX enhance Temple's ability to provide value for
his customers. With remote access and transfer, he can quickly respond
to customer needs while maintaining the security of their systems and
data. "SecureCRT allows me to work for clients remotely, increasing
both customer satisfaction and my ability to maximize billable hours,"
said Temple. "By having secure connections, clients are assured that
their data is safe with me."
How does Temple measure the performance of the products? "It's
simple — can I reliably work remotely or not? Support's important,
too. Do I get a call at 3:00 am to fix something that should be
able to be handled by a customer support rep? Not entirely joking,
the bottom line is how much sleep I get."
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