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Each October, the cybersecurity industry recognizes Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an international initiative first launched by the National Cybersecurity Alliance in 2004 to provide education about online
In February of 2021, one of the operators at the City of Oldsmar’s water treatment system noticed a change in the water supply. The level of sodium hydroxide was abnormally high, which would have been lethal for residents if ingested in large amounts.
Quick to react, the operator was able to reverse it before any damage was done.
An investigation later revealed that a cybersecurity breach had compromised one of the organization’s accounts for TeamViewer, which is a software used to access employees’ computers remotely. This left water treatment control panels vulnerable to cyber attacks.
As organizations around the world continue to adjust to the new digital workplace, concerns surrounding data and network security in remote-access environments remain at an all-time high, and cybercriminals are taking full advantage of vulnerable security points.
In the year 2021 alone, there was a 768% increase in attacks over Remote Desktop Protocol -based (RDP) clients such as TeamViewer, and the trend has only accelerated since.
Organizations of all types and sizes need a secure way to remotely access RDP, SSH, databases and Kubernetes endpoints.
What is Apache Guacamole?
Apache Guacamole is a clientless remote desktop gateway. Mike Jumper developed Guacamole before donating it to the Apache Software Foundation in 2016.
The platform, which now boasts tens of millions of active users, offers:
- Integration capabilities. A stack of core, thoroughly documented APIs tightly integrate with essentially any technology.
- Strong security. All actions are executed behind a firewall, with data stored on the network and not locally.
- Simplicity and ease-of-use. End users can access remote machines through any standard web browser, with no client software or plugins required.
- Performance. Guacamole feels like a high-performing local desktop for end users.
- Reliability. Guacamole is stable. Connections can be left running for days with no interruption or disconnections.
Apache Guacamole and Glyptodon, as told by its founders
What started as a side project for Mike Jumper quickly turned into a full-time job.
“I was hired out of college by a software company with firewall restrictions in place that would prevent anybody from accessing outside networks and servers from work,” Mike Jumper recalls. There were times when Jumper needed to access his home computer from work, but he couldn’t do that without changing port numbers – which was prohibited by his employment agreement. “So I looked into creating a web application to go around this restriction. There were plenty of SSH options that were web-based, but none that worked for what I needed.”
Then Mike got an idea – he started looking at creating his own remote-desktop solution and ended up running a Virtual Network Computing (VNC) client.
Guacamole was born.
“I’m not sure why James came up with this name,” Jumper laughs, “but it stuck! It was a simple tool to access one machine only via VNC.”
Over time, interest in the project grew and Mike, James and Frank teamed up to create Glyptodon – a company dedicated to commercially supporting Guacamole while donating all code changes back to the community.
Glyptodon was built to provide organizations with remote access that’s simple, scalable and supported.
“When we launched Glyptodon, our vision was to provide IT with the simplest, most secure way to achieve snappy, reliable access to remote desktops and applications,” Frank La explains. But Glyptodon turned out to have far more wide-ranging use cases. “Anything you can use a computer for, you can do remotely with Guacamole.”
Venturing into the Future of Privileged Access Management
Glyptodon’s potential caught the eye of Darren Guccione and Craig Lurey, co-founders of Keeper Security, who saw an opportunity to integrate Glyptodon into their company’s existing IAM platform. In December 2021, Keeper Security completed its acquisition of Glyptodon, which it renamed Keeper Connection Manager (KCM).
Mike Jumper, James Muehlner and Frank La all ended up joining the Keeper team in the process.
KCM is an enterprise-grade, all-in-one solution that’s fully integrated with Keeper’s enterprise password manager and Keeper Secrets Manager, powered by Apache Guacamole™ and commercially supported by Keeper. KCM allows credentials to be pulled dynamically from the Keeper Vault when employees are connecting to systems remotely.
In essence, Glyptodon became Keeper Connection Manager, powered by Apache Guacamole™ and commercially supported by Keeper.
A strong longtime supporter of the open-source community, Keeper is dedicated to contributing Apache Guacamole updates back to the project.
Benefits of Keeper Connection Manager
Keeper Connection Manager gives DevOps and IT teams simple but highly secure access to RDP, SSH, VNC, databases and Kubernetes endpoints through any web browser – without the hassle and expense of a VPN.
The following table is a comparison between the commercial KCM and the open-source Apache Guacamole.
Start your 14-day free trial of KCM today and get powerful, one-click, zero-trust access to your remote infrastructure.
