Organizations can also implement MFA to bolster their security even further.

It’s a widely known best practice among IT professionals that all RDP ports should be protected by a VPN (virtual private network) to limit who can authenticate to RDP endpoints. What doesn’t make sense, however, is that organizations are still exposing their RDP ports to the internet, despite the obvious risks. Current events have made a fully remote workforce a necessity, so it tracks that overall RDP usage has increased in response. The uptick both makes a lot of sense and no sense at all.

In a recent study, Shodan found that, since the beginning of 2020, RDP exposure rates to the internet have increased significantly, going up nearly 30% in February alone. In fact, many recent cybersecurity breaches were due to unprotected RDP ports. But just as they make on-premises systems more accessible for end users, internet-exposed RDP ports let virtually anyone try to authenticate to them - most often, bad actors looking to worm into your network. Unlike other network connectivity ports that are used for hosting websites or similar purposes, RDP ports provide access to an entire system. IT admins need to leverage VPNs and enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) on both their VPNs and RDP ports to prevent unauthorized RDP access.

Although effective for remote resource access, RDP is incredibly vulnerable to attack if left exposed to the internet. As organizations hurry to move their employees to a fully remote work model, many IT departments are relying on the Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to enable access to remote and/or virtual systems and servers.

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