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Re:NSA Cybersecurity Advisory: Patch Remote Desktop Services... by cm2187 on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @04:21AM (#20102441)
It’s hard to run a windows server remotely without RDP. Most remote administration tools are terrible. Stupid thing like you can’t update windows using remote powershell (which also takes ages to come online after the machine booted).

Rather than disabling RDP which I think is unrealistic, I think a simple way to increase greatly the security is to set up an IP whitelist. Have a list stored on a secure and reliable location (S3 bucket for instance) and a script running every 5 minutes, looking for changes to that list. If it changed run a simple command to update the remote IP restriction to all the administrative services in the windows firewall.

No solution is bullet proof but this allows you to manage the server remotely with very little inconvenience, without requiring to set up a VPN or an internal network, and goes a long way to reduce the exposure to vulnerabilities and brute force attacks.

I would do the same thing with IPMI.

Re:NSA Cybersecurity Advisory: Patch Remote Desktop Services... by alamortsubite on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @06:31AM (#20102964)
I'm not a sysadmin, but it seems even safer and easier to 1) keep Windows behind NAT, 2) ssh port forward through UFW on a cheap Linux box.
Re:NSA Cybersecurity Advisory: Patch Remote Desktop Services... by cm2187 on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @06:39AM (#20103003)
If you have the luxury to do that, but if you run a VM, or a single box in colocation, or rent a physical server, that may not be an option. My point is introducing an IP whitelist inside the server doesn't require to change the physical set up, nor any current process relying on the server being directly accessible. It's a low cost quick win.