Encrypting Remote Desktop Connections

This is a very common question at our helpdesk. Our clients want to connect to their offshore server in an encypted way. This tutorial will show you how you can do this in a few steps.

1. You need to download an ssh server at your server in Panama. We suggest you this Free ssh server CopSSH
The installation is very simple. Next, Next, Finish type of installation. After you isntalled you need to add a user to the system. You may use the Administrator and use the same password you use to connecto to remote desktop. You may use different user and passwords. It is up to you. Once your SSH server is set we can continue with step 2.

2. You now need an SSH client. We suggest you PuTTY. Run PuTTY and follow this directions:

Once you start putty you will have something similar to

Now we will create a profile in putty so that every time you need to encrypt your remote desktop connection you just load the profile in one click.

We need to add compression and target the ssh version to 2

Now we will configure the Tunnel. The Tunnel is what is going to allow us to run remote desktop encrypted. We will use as local port 3390 and in the destination you need to put the IP of the Offshore Remote Server and the port that Remote Desktop use 3389.Important! Do not forget to press the Add button. Somthing similar to this

Note that you need to replace theremoteserverIP with your Offshore Remote Server IP number so at the end it could be something like 200.114.178.14:3389

Now we are going to click on putty sessions category and will put the remote server IP, we are going to leave the port at 22, put a name to your profile then click save. At this point your profile is created what you have to do each time you want to connect to your remote offshore server is load the profile and click Open. Enter your user and password and once your are logged in just leave the program running.

Then you can open your remote desktop software and put localhost:3390 in the hostname field and then connect.

Now you are doing remote desktop through an encrypted SSH tunnel. This "long" process is only made once. After that you just in a few clicks will be able to do encrypted remote desktop connections.

Enjoy!
JM