Can any employee access company resources from anywhere and at any time? It depends on the company’s infrastructure. Recently established businesses have more chances to provide access wherever their teams are. However, companies with legacy architectures need to readapt to have the same time and place flexibility.
Every company infrastructure setup is unique. Therefore, it may require a different approach to solving the same challenges — like how users can access office-based data, applications, or devices while not being present on that particular site.
The most common solution is to choose VPN for security purposes and enablement of distributed teams. However, the VPN selection depends on its type and existing company network arrangement.
If your target is to enable employees to securely connect to different offices and branches of the organization despite being elsewhere, Site-to-Site VPN is the option to explore.
Site-to-Site solution using NordLayer
Site-to-Site allows users to reach office-bind resources on HQ, your assigned office, or another company branch while not actually being on-site. It is a type of VPN that establishes an encrypted connection to a requested resource on the company network.
NordLayer’s cloud-based feature elevates typical industry Site-to-Site capabilities by connecting not just different corporate sites and resources but by enabling both on-site present and remote users to connect to any company resource on the network.
Therefore, connection to a single physical location via a virtual private gateway using VPN translates into user connection to all devices and resources assigned to a company router or firewall.
How does NordLayer’s Site-to-Site feature work?
The cloud-based feature can be enabled by connecting NordLayer’s virtual private gateway to the company’s router or firewall.
Moreover, cloud-based Site-to-Site makes it possible to configure a dedicated VPN server connect to cloud service providers like Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, or Entra ID (Azure AD).
Users with VPN access - whether present in the branch office, HQ, or remote - can connect to the company network and access the added internal resources and the on-site devices connected to the router/firewall, even though they don’t support a VPN connection.
Connection from a company branch:
NordLayer’s Site-to-Site feature requires virtual private gateways and physical location configuration. Once it’s ready, a VPN connects users to the local company network and allows them to access company resources like applications, data, computers, or printers.
The same logic applies to users accessing the company’s cloud service provider resources. VPN established connection and router/firewall configuration to support IKEv2 Site-to-Site functionality with a static public IP address can provide access to resources for employees despite their location.
Shortly, suppose an employee for a job needs to access your organization’s customer information stored in a database located in HQ, the email server that stands in an office branch on another continent and needs to print it out while working from home. In that case, it’s all available via NordLayer’s Site-to-Site VPN functionality.
How NordLayer’s Site-to-Site is different?
Traditional WAN companies have an architecture based on an all-to-one setup when business units - remote locations and resources of the corporate - are connected to one main point.
Such organizations exploit extensive legacy Site-to-Site architectures that employees use to connect to the network’s main point, allowing them to access company-enclosed resources from different locations. This type of network architecture delivers interconnectivity yet lacks remote flexibility and has downsides affecting network performance, efficiency, and scalability.
As a solution to legacy Site-to-Site, NordLayer is developed to provide flexible and simple problem-solving to the general downsides of using legacy networking. When focusing on the feature functionality, the distinction between legacy setup and cloud-based remote network access solution comes from overcoming the limitations of traditional Site-to-Site solutions.
Cloud-based NordLayer solution handles legacy infrastructure challenges of increasing remote connections with quick integration to the existing architecture. It reverts performance–efficiency–scalability limitations to company advantage:
Decreased deployment time and expenses. NordLayer solution is fully hardware-free and compatible with hardware-based or hybrid existing infrastructures. Functionalities can be deployed within minutes and don’t require complex costs and long delivery times, focusing on time-to-value for the organization.
Maintained security and productivity levels. NordLayer Site-to-Site distributes encrypted user traffic to company resources based on the request nature without affecting connection quality instead of bulk processing all users to a primary point of connection and allocating to requested resources afterward.
User traffic distribution. The feature decreases the heavy traffic load directing users to the internet resources, internal data centers, servers, or applications in a more streamlined manner. Therefore, the increased remote user traffic peaks don’t impact performance quality as with a traditional Site-to-Site setup.
Efficiency and scalability. Naturally, user traffic distribution significantly reduces on-site equipment use managing the ad-hoc demand to upgrade. On the contrary, cloud-based Site-to-Site functionality enables the company to scale on demand without resource-intensive planning.
The feature brings another level to team performance in business operations using Site-to-Site. NordLayer’s cloud-based feature ‘helps cut hardware-ing and distance corners’, bringing efficiency to secure data sharing and authorized access of on-site devices within the organizations, even if physically impossible.
Benefits of Site-to-Site VPN
Primarily, Site-to-Site VPN allows for establishing non-office-only based connections. The VPN enables secure data transfers and trusted user activity between the on-premise network and the public network established over the internet.
Implementing NordLayer on top of your existing infrastructure, Site-to-Site unlocks effective and robust cybersecurity measures for various organizational aspects.
Increased network security
Sensitive data and confidential information is the target of most cyber attacks. Thus, encrypted data transfers between organization members utilizing Site-to-Site, whether in the office or remote, help safeguard against data breaches.
Streamlined business operations
Team performance is heavily related to the availability and capacity of the company network. Therefore, Site-to-Site feature maintains a good speed and stable data traffic flow to provide users with quality connectivity and constant access to resources that influence business continuity.
Flexible and scalable protection
Hardware-free Site-to-Site configuration is a beneficial add-on to the existing company network, even the largely hardware-based ones. Thus, the reaction-to-action time to solve ad-hoc challenges is multiple times shorter and easier. It requires minimal resources and provides a solution based on business needs within minutes.
Entering NordLayer’s Site-to-Site
NordLayer solution provides a modern approach-based Site-to-Site VPN. The feature allows present and remote employees to access data and devices in multiple corporate environments.
Using our remote network access solution to enable Site-to-Site VPN for the organization, IT admins have to follow simple actions to configure the feature. First, they need to create VPN gateways via the Control Panel as entry points into the network and assign teams or role-based employees to access the gateway so they can enter the company network. Site-to-Site has to be configured for every company unit for the seamless cooperation of teams.
With fewer systems to manage, unlimited scalability, flexibility, and easy setup, companies can ensure smooth and productive connections for their users and maintain high-security levels of the business.
Andrius Buinovskis
Head of Product
Andrius Buinovskis, Head of Product at NordLayer, began his IT journey in the early ’90s when he exclusively experienced the thrill of technology by accidentally deleting and then reinstalling Windows on his own PC. Since then, his passion for IT has grown, leading him to specialise in developing IT services across diverse industries, including banking, telco, aviation, and cyber defence. At NordLayer, Andrius is now deeply involved in strategising and leading the product development agenda, further trailing his mark in cybersecurity.
