DirectAccess

Throughout our discussion about Always On VPN, I mentioned Microsoft DirectAccess a couple of times. DirectAccess is another form of automatic VPN-like connectivity, but it takes a different approach than that of Always On VPN. Where AOVPN simply uses expected, well-known VPN protocols and does some crafty magic to automatically launch those otherwise traditional VPN tunnels, DirectAccess tunnels are quite proprietary. Tunnels are protected by IPsec and are essentially impenetrable and also unable to be impersonated. I find that security teams love the protections and complexity surrounding DA tunnels because it is a connection platform that attackers have no idea how to tamper with or how to replicate.

In my experience, at this point in the game, Microsoft DirectAccess is the most common reason that administrators deploy the Remote Access role on a Windows Server instance. As stated, the easiest way to think about DirectAccess is to think of it as an automatic VPN. Similar...