As businesses scramble to get their employees working from home, you may need experts to assist with projects as your day-to-day staff handles the overwhelming task of getting users working remotely.
Don’t forget to keep security in mind as systems are brought online to facilitate the transition from having users work onsite to working from home.
Things to consider:
- VPN – The most common and oldest method used for allowing employees to connect to your internal resources is VPN. This is the choice if you want to quickly set up your users without having to spin up additional servers or expand storage to accommodate other technologies. Once configured, any user can use Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Connection to connect to internal computers or servers.
- Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) – The two widely used products for VDI are Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and VMware Horizon for hosting virtualized desktops onsite. In the event of an emergency, these can be brought up very quickly if you already have the infrastructure in place. For those that don’t have the necessary infrastructure in place, there are plenty of options for VDI known as desktops-as-a-service (DaaS), such as Amazon WorkSpaces, Citrix Managed Desktops, and others. Either hosting this yourself or using a cloud solution, the users go to a web portal, will sign-in with their provided credential, and click on an icon to launch their assigned VDI.
- Two-factor authentication – Whether you are using one solution or more for connecting your users to internal network resources, using two-factor authentication to add a second method of verifying someone’s identity is crucial. Picking the right solution will be the difference between handling a flood of calls of users that can’t log-in and users that easily authenticate using their smartphone in seconds. In a time of crisis, you must add this 2nd layer of security to protect your corporate data so that only authorized users are allowed access to your internal network.
- End-point protection – Gone are the days that you only installed antivirus software. In our ever-evolving world, next-generation of end-point protection software includes antivirus, antimalware, firewall, and Host Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS). This is installed on servers, desktops, and mobile devices. End-point security software is centrally managed and protects your entire network from multiple threats so that you see all risks from a single console.
- Backup – Ensure that you have backups configured and that you can do restores of critical systems. Too many companies don’t have a backup and restore strategy or, worse, they do have one in place, and everyone assumes it is working as expected. It’s when you try to restore data that you discover that either the backup system stopped working a long time ago or you’re unable to restore due to the process being too complicated. In essence, you realized you don’t have any backups. Now is the time to check that this crucial system is working, and you know how to use it. Backup is something that is often overlooked by many.
If you find yourself in a situation where either you don’t have the trained personnel to set up or maintain the necessary infrastructure or perhaps your staff is overwhelmed by the current workload, call us, and we can assist you in alleviating the workload.