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Controlling User Access With The AnyDesk Whitelist


In a world of growing technology and mobile workplaces, the need for remote support is more critical than ever. Although using remote desktops tools has become quite common in the last time, there may still be some concerns regarding security when using remote support tools. “If we install this software on our computers, can we be sure that no one outside the company can access our computers?” This is a question that we have heard quite often, that´s why we developed our whitelist feature.

Overview

As you know, to start a session, you need the computer’s AnyDesk address. The request must then be confirmed by the computer user before the session is established. The whitelist sets out exactly who is authorized to access your computer. If the whitelist is active, only a pre-defined group of people will be able to connect. This ensures that nobody who isn’t authorized to do so can start a session. The whitelist could contain all the computers in your IT department, for example. Or perhaps just your own personal laptop, so that requests can only be made from there.

Setting up your whitelist

You can find the Access Control List in the security tab of the AnyDesk settings. In order to activate access control, the security tab has to be unlocked. Use the  + button to add an entry. A text entry will appear at the bottom of the list. Entries can be removed using the “-” button after they have been selected. After setting up the list, only users who are on the whitelist have the ability to access that particular device.

Wildcards (* and ?) are supported to match against an alias (pc-1@ad). This is useful for example to restrict connections to a specific company (e.g. *@company will grant access to service-1@company, service-2@company, but not to trudy@competitor) or even to specific hosts (e.g. service-?@company will grant access to service-1@company and service-2@company, but not to sales-1@company). Wildcards do not apply to numerical ids.

At AnyDesk, we pride ourselves in putting our customers and users first, always working to ensure our solutions are the best available in the market. Please keep in mind that we are planning to bring you more security features that will allow you more detailed control on who can access which computer.

AnyDesk 3.0 is now available for free download at ttps://anydesk.com/download This version is currently only available for Windows PCs (Windows XP or higher). MAC and Linux versions will follow.

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