Given current events with COVID-19 coronavirus, business continuity has become a top priority as work-from-home or remote work policies are enacted for the health and safety of employees and communities.
But many organizations and business IT departments are not adequately prepared or secure for these remote workforce situations and lack sufficient infrastructure, scalability, or security to support them.
It’s true that remote work technologies have been available for years, but these options have not always been accessible across industries and for organizations of all sizes. Even if businesses have some remote work tools, like Virtual Private Networking (VPN), they may only be applicable for certain teams or departments.
Even if it’s possible to expand these tools across a company, security measures can be stretched thin or lost in the rush to make services available to all employees. From phishing to outages, making the unexpected leap to working remote can leave businesses vulnerable to massive IT risks. Downtime is unaffordable for any organization, but the health and well-being of staff and customers can force companies to make big IT decisions without time to evaluate business continuity or disaster recovery plans – not to mention making sure remote work solutions follow any compliance standards a business must adhere to, such as CCPA, HIPAA, PCI, GDPR, and more.
But thanks to cloud innovations, a world of web-based apps, virtual desktops, advanced firewalls, endpoint encryption, conferencing software, open VPN, and other cloud-enhanced tools are making remote work possible from nearly any device for companies anywhere in the world securely. The cloud has enabled better scalability, availability, and security for existing solutions and made them more accessible and adaptable, especially when organizations partner with IT professionals experienced in business continuity solutions.
For businesses facing IT challenges with work-from-home mandates, exploring cloud technologies can be the key to keeping businesses running smoothly through the coronavirus pandemic and beyond. These solutions include:
- Cloud Desktops – Securely access your virtual desktop from any device or browser while allowing IT to easily manage your deployment using existing skills and tools. Flexible consumption models allow organizations to optimize costs by selecting the most cost-effective resources and only paying for the resources they use.
- Remote Access (VPN) – VPN allows individual users to connect to an organization’s network from a remote location using a computer or device connected to the Internet so remote workers can connect from anywhere. Even for businesses who already use VPN services, new scalable options are available to push VPNs across your entire staff.
- Managed Security – Through secure remote access with managed security, tools and services are installed to ensure that anyone who accesses a business’s network is authenticated and uses a secure connection. Managed security relieves internal IT teams from monitoring, evaluating, or even resolving issues that may arise by relying on the managed service provider to protect their employee and consumer data. For companies that must remain compliant in through remote work policies, Compliance-as-a-Service will ensure requirements are maintained.
These cloud solutions are all designed to provide the peace of mind that businesses will stay up and running even in remote workforce situations now and in the future. If these services or tools sound like something your business needs to explore given the current COVID-19 coronavirus circumstances, Ntirety provides a wide range of options for managed cloud solutions including virtual desktops, VPN services, Managed Security, and Compliance-as-a-Service.
In this time of uncertainty, no company should have to worry about the availability or security of remote workforce technologies. Evaluating and optimizing business IT is critical to effectively maintain work-from-home and remote work policies.
No matter what, the health and safety of our communities, clients, and colleagues are top priorities for Ntirety today and every day. We are here to help support your business in any way possible. Schedule a consultation to learn more about remote workforce cloud solutions.