Remote-Access Technologies: A Comparison of GoToMyPC and pcAnywhere

Overview One of the major issues confronting Information Systems managers today is providing secure access to corporate IS resources to people who are physically located outside of the corporate network. These resources — such as databases, sales tools, email, etc.— are usually behind firewalls for security reasons so that they cannot be accessed from outside the corporation.

A common method for allowing remote access to protected computing resources is to use remote control software, such as Symantec's pcAnywhere™. Such solutions ship only the screen images and keyboard input between the local and remote computers.This functionality affords remote users access to computers on the corporate LAN, allowing them to remotely access all applications while experiencing the same performance as if they were on the LAN itself. However, traditional remote control solutions bring their own set of management and security challenges.This white paper compares the management and security issues of one market-leading remote control products, pcAnywhere, with Expertcity's GoToMyPC. It should be noted that the issues that apply to pcAnywhere generally apply to other remote control products.