Creating a Stable and Secure Connection from a Remote Website to the Inside of a Network

This paper will examine the best way to grant remote access to the network of a very small business for employees who are out of the office on the road. After examining the benefits and disadvantages of various commercial and homegrown options available, the paper will describe how to set up an FTP server with Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Services), which is built in to Microsoft Windows 2000. The paper will then show how to harden IIS and then describe other measures to add defense in depth to the project. The paper concludes that IIS is an acceptable way to share files for certain organizations, but only if extra steps are taken to harden the system, and only as long as the organization in question is extremely small with a trusted group of employees who have a modicum of technical ability.