Two great freewares that most people do not know and/or do not pay attention how cool/useful they are, should be used everyday not only for Terminal Services access/control but on any other machine you are accessing using RDP.

These are SecureRDP and the 2X Client. Let me explain what they do and where I think people should use them.

SecureRDP: this tool works as a filter for incoming RDP connections. It blocks the connection before you can even see the logon screen asking for your username/password. You can filter by IP, Computer Name, MAC address and even client version number. This tool should be used not only on TSs but on Exchange Servers, DCs etc! Today if a user, looking over the admin shoulder, gets his password, he will be able to logon to a DC and do whatever he wants. With SecureRDP the admin would be able to filter the connection to allow only the admin PC MAC address so even with the admin username/password that user would NOT be able to get to the DC. How cool is that?

2X Client: This is what the Microsoft RDP Client should have been since day one. The main difference is a tab - Network. And what a difference this little tab makes! You can use this client to connect to any TS machine EVEN if there is a proxy server somewhere on your network! It supports SOCKS/HTTP proxies and works great. I remember the hassle I had to go through years ago when such thing did not exist and I had to connect to my TS at home from a customer site, where they had a proxy server! I was able to do it but this little gem would have saved me hours. Highly recommended.

And the best part? These are completely FREE. It cannot get better than that.

Cheers!