How safe is remote access on WHS?

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I currently have my Windows Home Server configured to allow me to remote to it to access files on the server. I was wondering if anyone has any ideas on how secure or insecure this is. I really haven't been able to find much on the topic on teh Google...

 

[Red Squirrel]

I would not trust it to open it up to the internet. What you could do is setup a SSH server on a seperate machine then open up SSH and use RDP through a SSH tunnel to get to the windows machine. That or openvpn. If you go the SSH route make sure you install fail2ban to stop brute force attacks otherwise by default openssh does not do anything about brute force.

 

[ViRGE]

It's IIS. So long as you're using a strong password, you're fine.

 

[RebateMonger]

By default, WHS uses the identical remote access system that Windows Small Business Server 2003 uses in many thousands of businesses around the world. The entire login process is encrypted.

If somebody breaks in, it's going to be by someone getting or breaking the password. You can set password creation to only allow complex passwords. And the Administrator account can't log in from the Internet.

I haven't looked, but I'm pretty confident that standard Windows Server password rules are in place, temporarily disabling accounts that try to brute-force passwords.