Exactly, I have tons of IOT devices. I put them on a separate subnet that does not have a gateway to the internet then I VPN into that network to access them. Perhaps a product that makes that a simple process will solve the problem?
The idea is that all your IOT stuff establishes a connection to this server, creating an encrypted network between them. You then add your control servers to that network and job done. You devices don't need any inbound access to talk to each other. All the connections are outbound, so no ports to open on your firewall and no risk.
You could do this by yourself, but we take that hassle out of your hands. Happy to help with custom deployments too outside our main service; it's a great way of learning our customers' needs.
It's hard though to have your exact setup as a service, it implies incoming VPN connections to the site where you deploy your IOT and a VPN server of sorts.
Our main focus was remote teams and devs having to use remote servers, however IOT might be a killer use here.
Very nice service by the way. I have used ngrok in the past and found it invaluable for a few odd applications. I'll give it a try in future.
Thank you for the feedback and the suggestion. It is a good idea actually. I'm considering new features in the roadmap, because at the moment I don't even offer Internet access through my system, it's just a private LAN (I'm not competing with the myriad of privacy-minded browsing VPNs out there). Adding a manageable Internet Gateway could be a nice option.
Developing and deploying a software+hardware piece would be very interesting too, so there's no need to deploy agents on the remote servers or IOT devices (on most of them you probably can't) and I take the hassle out of my customer's hands to setup a e.g. Linux gateway to route traffic through the tunnel.
It could suit your needs or we can help with custom deployments. In any case I'd like to learn more about your needs and your expectations. Can I drop you an email?