How to Develop the Best Security App for RDS - by T.Montalcino

RDS-Tools is proud to introduce T. Montalcino, expert developer for TSplus security and monitoring add-ons. TSplus hired Thomas at the beginning of 2018 to kick off the evolution of the RDS-Tools. In this interview, Thomas reviews the progress made over the year and explains how he succeeded in turning RDS-Knight into an advanced, powerful and user-friendly security tool for RDS servers Administrators.

Introduction - Who is T. Montalcino?

Thomas Montalcino is the brain behind RDS-Tools' amazing products range. He was hired more than a year ago to develop - originally for TSplus - the extensions RDS-Knight and Server Genius, in order to complete the offer around remote access technologies. Following their success, these applications are now also sold as stand-alone programs under the brand RDS-Tools.

When asked about his let-motive, Thomas states:

I enjoy finding ways to help people make the best of their technological devices and thus make their life better.

Thomas had a variety of IT experiences since his master's graduation. Before joining TSplus, he used to plan, design and build customer relationship management systems for large companies and public organisations. According to Thomas,

CRM is a very interesting way to explore a range of technologies, programming languages, systems, all cutting-edge or legacy.

Thomas had studied information technology at EFREI, a French engineering school, before he took his first job in customer relationship management as a developer for Orange Business Services. He then joined Microsoft as a consultant. These past experiences brought him a deep understanding and accurate vision of what customers can experience and expect towards digital transformation, especially leveraging cloud computing to achieve the highest performance. Also, depending on the clients and their business model, challenges for building a great CRM tool have always been very different: the wide variety of customers brought him different perspectives.

What are today's Cybersecurity challenges?

" Cyber criminality is a fast-changing world, and attack techniques are becoming increasingly sophisticated. T To be protected against these rapidly evolving threats, businesses definitely need to acquire deep learning techniques to be able to prevent harmful attacks, to monitor and to remediate security breaches. Threat Intelligence is definitely one of the trends looking in this direction. "

From Thomas' point of view,

the value of data is still widely underestimated , given that companies working with personal and corporate data are among the most successful ones. And, with the Internet of Things growing fast, data will surely intervene in every aspect of our life and be even more valuable. ."

That’s why cyber security must focus on keeping data integrity and securing access to these precious pieces of information.

Why is RDS-Knight the best Security Solution for RDS?

It is always difficult to feel proud in achieving a piece of code, because there is always room for improvement.

Nevertheless, Thomas feels that RDS-Knight is now a relevant security tool and it offers even more features than the competition.

• First, RDS-Knight is easy and quick to configure. In particular, Homeland Access Protection and Bruteforce Defender are a must-have and it takes only seconds to activate them.
• Second, RDS-Knight enables administrators to fine-tune and enforce rules for users and groups using Working Hours Restrictions, One Click to Secure and Endpoint Access Protection. These additional layers of security, at the user level, are an efficient way to keep your RDS server secure while making the utilisation of remote services easier for users.​
• Last important point, RDS-Knight is designed to work for the widest range of Windows operating systems, with the greatest performance possible. As an example, Thomas explains that RDS-Knight now includes an amazing Ransomware protection, which is a great addition offering and leveraged different technologies to catch threats as quickly as possible.

" I found the Windows 10 ransomware protection is very efficient. However, previous Windows operating systems surely won’t benefit from this protection. There is only RDS-Knight to fight ransomware on older Windows systems. This project was a great opportunity for me to learn about the ransomware situation globally and the techniques to prevent them, which are subject to continuous thinking.

However, there is always an edge case which can only be seen on the customer’s live computer. Thomas and his team did spend a tremendous amount of time on optimising Homeland Access Protection when running in certain circumstances. Thomas concludes:

" Our customers remain our best source of feedback ".

What are the opportunities for development at TSplus/RDS-Tools?

Thomas has been working on RDS-Tools for over a year and is fully satisfied:

On my first day at TSplus, Adrien Carbonne, who is the Head of the Development team, welcomed me with a company mug, a company sweater and a powerful laptop; I could only be satisfied! For me, having the right tools to do the job is way too often underrated and I appreciated feeling readily part of the company.

From his opinion, the success of TSplus' business is partly based on everyone's ability to make the best of each others' work. Although work is done remotely, team members engage every day using their own company social network. This contributes to establishing strong relations within the company.

Thomas collaborates closely with Adrien and Dominique Benoit, the President. Together they establish the roadmap, discuss the products’ priorities and plan the next steps. As they try to keep the development cycle as short as possible to always include new features, they often happen to discuss the best technology or solution should a difficulty arise. Thomas ensures:

" Each one has a different mindset and the discussions are always earnest and deep, considering each one's experience. "

Interrogated about his own career perspectives, Thomas replied:

Dominique and Adrien have given me the opportunity to work on every aspect of the development lifecycle of RDS-Tools products, from strategy to support. I enjoy contributing in all these steps and I'd like to take advantage of my current projects to deepen my expertise in IT security. As the company is growing, I expect to be working on more ambitious projects and technologies, until potentially taking the lead of a dedicated team. "

Some Major Innovations Planned for RDS-Tools in 2019?

As we talked in late December, the RDS-Tools team was in the process of establishing the products roadmap for 2019 and everything had still to be decided. However, Thomas shared some exclusive news: one of the objectives in 2019 is definitely to improve Server Genius. Customers can expect some outstanding features! Also, the developers put considerable effort into redesigning the user interface to make TSplus, RDS-Knight and Server Genius even more user-friendly.

To be continued! Thank you to Thomas Montalcino for sharing his expert opinion.

Since 1996, RDS Tools has specialised in remote-access technology. RDS Tools provides the easiest-to-use and most cost-effective tools available to assist you in exploiting the ever-increasing power and economy of today’s computing hardware.

Visit RDS-Tools website or contact them at [email protected]