As millions of companies scramble to effectively manage remote working at scale, find out what puts companies and employees at risk and best practices for large-scale remote work deployments.
To keep business running and employees safe during the global COVID-19 pandemic, there is much that can be done to ensure your customers’ organizations are flexible enough to accommodate the surge in the remote workforces. And it’s important to communicate that help is available to accelerate the remote-workforce ramp-up.
What does an ideal remote work strategy look like?
Some remote connectivity technology includes the use of VDI and remote desktop VPN, identity management, two-factor authentication as well as mobile security and policy management. A thoughtful process needs to be established to ensure all necessary components are covered.
A typical remote connectivity setup checklist includes:
Establish connectivity with secure VPN-type technology.
Make sure your customers understand you are not pushing an agenda. Rather, let them know that your job is to help customers choose a solution that will scale and help them with all associated licensing and hardware needs.
Construct a seamless work connectivity experience, one that is consistent with the office software employees are experienced with. This calls for a virtual desktop or remote desktop application. Make sure to emphasize your experience and expertise working with the major players such as Citrix, Amazon, Vmware, Nutanix to streamline the implementation process.
For businesses looking to scale quickly, you can steer them toward cloud-based options such as AWS, Microsoft and Citrix. These solutions provide a quick on ramp — without risk of hardware supply-chain issues. Of course, this brings other concerns that need to be addressed like: how do they connect to applications if they’re using a cloud-based virtual desktop solution or how do you ensure data security?
Security Best Practices for Remote Work
Another important concern for CIOs is Identity Management. With 3.5 billion people under lockdown and logging in from insecure networks, companies need to recognize homebound workforces and the devices they are using. This involves active directory, two-factor authentication, and Privileged Access Management. You can start by helping customers review their current security posture and associated requirements by asking if there are any compliance issues or regulations (NIST standard) they need to follow. These will affect their choices and your advice regarding best practices.
Finally, don’t overlook the endpoints devices—remote workers aren’t typically well-protected. How do organizations manage all those endpoints and ensure they have the same level of protection and policy application as in the office? Technologies include Mobile Device Management (MDM), Endpoint Security, cloud-based security and filtering technologies. Customers who haven’t been using collaboration tools (e.g. Microsoft Teams, WebEx, Zoom), will need to adopt them quickly and get training to speed the rate of tool adoption.
Some Remote Workers
This is a global pandemic and companies all over the world are dramatically increasing their remote worker capabilities and as this pandemic grows. Needless to say, the same remote connectivity issues will arise, so you’ll need to understand the local “operating rules†around security frameworks and needs.
The best IT consultants will have worked successfully across all of these areas, with multiple customers and technologies. Consulting organizations that work with many tools will not be biased towards one particular toolset but will help customers quickly choose the most appropriate one, based on their environment, applications, and worker needs. They’ll also know the tools needed to remain compliant with various standards. And they can accelerate the process for their clients—often by three to five times—because they have experience in many policy areas.
If you have customers already supporting a minimal remote workforce, they probably already have the policies needed, along with the technologies to support it. They’ve probably thought through the security-input implications and dealt with those issues. For these companies, it’s just a matter of scaling what they have in place; after the conversations to understand what they have and determine the best way to scale those platforms. The good news, if it’s literally just software licensing—this can be turned around in a day.
Learn More: Best Practices for Secure Remote Management of IoT DevicesOpens a new window
New To Remote Workforces
Customer organizations new to remote workforces have a lot more work to do and need to consider Access Control and the policy side to determine:
- Who should be allowed to connect?
- Do they limit access?
- How do they secure their endpoints while providing access to tools when they’re not on the corporate network?
- How do they stop malware outside corporate security boundaries?
If they need hardware, the timeline is dependent on what the logistics situation is for those particular platforms. If clients don’t possess the underlying technology, initial conversations should be spread out over a couple of weeks. That way, you can really understand the business, legal, and technological requirements before exploring the best options. Depending on the logistics, it could take anywhere from a week to several weeks to get the companies up and running.
Learn More: Why Businesses Resort to VPNs During COVID-19 CrisisOpens a new window
Considering or Tweaking Remote Workers—Don’t Wait
Whatever your clients’ remote workforce situation, advise them not to wait. If customers just need licensing, they can rapidly scale. If they need to scale via hardware, that presents an additional challenge because of current supply chain issues. Simply put: supply chain disruption has already happened and companies who haven’t placed orders will experience delays. Realize this and consider policy and security-driven ideas before choosing technology. Start now to help customers work through these issues so they can deploy technology and get testing to support their remote workforce.
In conclusion, when assisting customers with their remote workforce needs—do it in a methodical fashion. Work through each area discussed above. Don’t simply focus on one area such as connectivity, security or policy and strive to deploy a smaller environment that has the ability to scale. That way your customers can immediately start testing and work out any issues right away and be ready to scale them quickly. Paramount to the success of supporting any remote workforce is to make sure the selected system has the capability to scale and reflect all needed applications from the cube to the curb.
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