SPOK ~ Secure Portable Office Key

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SPOK enables you to access your data remotely from anywhere with an Internet connection. The overriding requirement is one of security. SPOK runs Portable Applications for securely accessing your office data remotely and is ideally suited for use with USB drives. Analyzing the parameters required for achieving this security identifies some basic requirements.

The best way of ensuring security is to run an SSH (Secure SHell) tunnel between SPOK and the Zybert GEM in your office.

A tunnel is a connection, generally encrypted, connecting two computers together across another unsecured network. Rather than cross this unsecured and dangerous network with no protection, you first create a tunnel and travel through securely, immune to all the threats going on around you.

While you are out of the office you may wish to read your e-mail or have access to other data or even work directly on your office computer as though you were sat in front of it.

If you are separated by an insecure network then malicious individuals could be listening, and capture a copy of your information en route. Your login could be captured and used to gain unauthorised access to your e-mail and everything else on your server.

Every computer or device on the Internet must have a unique number assigned to it called the IP address. This IP address is used to recognise your particular computer out of the millions of other computers connected to the Internet. When information is sent over the Internet to your computer it accepts that information by using ports.

You have an IP address, and then many possible ports on that IP address. When a program on your computer sends or receives data over the Internet it sends that data to an IP address and a specific port on the remote computer, and receives the data on a port on its own computer. Once an application binds itself to a particular port, that port can not be used by any other application.

To prevent data you send accross the Internet from being captured by others, you can use the tunneling capabilities of SSH. SPOK sets up an encrypted SSH tunnel to your office server. The SSH software on your computer sets up a port forwarding mechanism so that traffic that goes for example to the e-mail port on your computer gets forwarded over the encrypted tunnel and ends up at the mail server's port in your office.