Maintain network security and business continuity during COVID-19
As tough as the current situation is for businesses, imagine if we didn’t have the ability to work from home. Fortunately, we’ve been preparing our teams to work remotely for years, with the rapid increase in mobility, BYOD and cloud computing.
And now, we need to ramp up our security measures to keep pace with opportunistic cybercriminals because the sudden surge in people working from home exposes our networks and data to new threats. For example, stealthy attackers are busy launching phishing scams, posing as legitimate-looking emails from the CDC and WHO, and luring victims with ads for “vaccines” and “cures” for the novel coronavirus.
How then do we help our teams stay productive and collaborative, continue business as-near- usual as possible and protect our assets when our workforce is remote during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Secure your network, protect your productivity with virtual desktop
With virtual desktop, your entire staff can work remotely, securely accessing company files and applications from their home laptop, tablet or mobile device. By using virtualization software to host your operating system on a central server, rather than locally on each employee device, virtual desktop ensures the same security protocols that would be in place on-site are deployed remotely.
For example, you can extend your stateful firewall to each end-user device while encrypting all traffic over your VPN to protect your data and applications. You can strengthen your email, web content and URL filtering to protect employees who visit websites or open emails infected with malware or ransomware. And you can control the data your remote users can access, copy, print, share, and download, to keep it out of rogue hands
By consolidating all your web and Windows applications into a single, password-protected application, virtual desktop creates a more efficient, productive workflow, eliminating the need to toggle between sites and log into numerous systems, while allowing fast, secure access to necessary files so business can continue as usual.
And though your people may be working miles, states, even countries apart, they can continue to communicate and collaborate regardless of the speed and performance of their local connection. Because with virtual desktop, bandwidth comes from your central datacenter, allowing smooth videoconferences and Internet calls, secure chats, fast uploads and downloads, and real-time file sharing, without latency or lag time.
Ensure business continuity and disaster recovery with managed services
Even if you have the resources to keep an IT team on the clock around the clock, if your business is considered non-essential, your IT experts are working remotely right now and are not allowed on-site. But your critical operations run 24/7/365, whether your employees are on the premises or not. After all, your technology doesn’t sleep at night, or ever.
But with a managed services partner, you can sleep at night, and so can your IT team, because you will have a team of experts monitoring and managing your network and servers at all times. They will proactively optimize performance and constantly defend against cyberthreats— detecting, identifying, notifying you and shutting down vulnerabilities before they escalate. And really, because your servers will not be located on-premises, there is no need to have your IT team on-site anyway.
With a managed services provider, you will have a reliable partner who will customize a security solution to defend your entire cloud-based infrastructure with network and application firewalls, Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) mitigation, data encryption and anti-virus, along with a resilient replica of your entire network as a backup to keep you operational, no matter what.
For example, if something were to happen to a production server while your IT team is forced to work from home—say a hard disk crash, ransomware attack or necessary system patch—your business-critical communications will continue, with minimal to no user disruption, because your backup server and operating systems failover within minutes, keeping you up and running at all times.
Free your IT team to focus on your digital evolution
Partnering with a managed services provider isn’t just a temporary solution to keep your business secure and productive during the pandemic. It’s a strategic, long-term plan to complement the work your IT team does day in and day out, even under normal circumstances.
Because cloud IT is what your cloud partner does, day in and day out. They are trained to stay ahead of technology and security. And they will guide your decisions to help maximize your ROI with a right-sized, custom-configured mix of public, private and hybrid cloud platforms, without a large CapEX.
With a team of cloud IT experts managing your network, you’re free to focus on keeping your people and business safe and secure, productive and collaborative today, with an eye on your long-term digital evolution.
Forward together
In challenging times your partnerships matter most. As your dedicated IT partner, Frontier manages your critical communications infrastructure 24/7/365. We’ll keep your team connected and collaborating, securely. Get in touch.
Amid the growing concerns and impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19), the health and safety of our customers and employees is our highest priority. Click here to learn how we are committed to keeping our customers and colleagues connected, safe and informed.
