Remote work - complete, secure, productive

What is f5

Today, people around the world are having to radically change the way they work and the way they manage teams of colleagues who work remotely. Fortunately, in our time, the technical means for full-fledged remote work not only exist, but are also available as never before.

The teleworking questions fall into two topics - tools and psychology. Psychological and organizational aspects are very important and interesting, but I will not consider them. I would like to outline the main technical issues that need to be considered in order to start remote work as quickly as possible and at the same time keep the productivity, security and morale of your business at the level not worse than during normal office work.

Iron

The first thing a remote worker needs is a computer. If the main work machine in the office is a laptop, no problem. But if there are desktops in the office, you have to decide what exactly employees are allowed to do on personal machines that you have no control over. It can only be working with mail and participating in online conferences, or it can be full access to corporate resources. In any case, employees must understand the need to install the latest security updates, antiviruses with up-to-date updates on their personal PCs, and correct home wireless network settings (strong passwords, encryption, network hiding). And understand your responsibility for this.

If working with personal devices is generally unacceptable for security reasons, I think the decision to purchase work laptops would be the right one in such a situation. Yes, it does take an investment, but you get a fully managed and secure workplace. You can even monitor labor productivity at a remote location using special tools such as Stakhanovets. And employees receive convenient, pre-configured work computers. Which they do not need to share with family members who also stay at home. Calculate how much it would cost to drop performance, say 30%, and compare it to the cost of a laptop.

Another good option would be to publish desktops to VDI or specific applications for work. This is good from a security standpoint, but requires the infrastructure to be prepared to handle the growth in the number of connections.

Without personal meetings, there will be many times more calls and conferences. Poor ringing sound is one of the most common problems. Your best bet is to buy quality headsets for all your employees (and remember to test them).

IT readiness

If work laptops for all employees are not your scenario, you have to organize VPNs and a remote administration tool such as TeamViewer on personal devices. Not everyone can cope with installing and configuring software, so you will need help from your IT specialists, and remote help.

In general, at first, the load on IT services may increase, and the helpdesk will be inundated with requests with complaints about remote connection failures, setting up video conferencing, etc. The situation will be corrected by the presence of clear and understandable instructions for working with certain services, applications and systems, but the technical support staff are facing difficult days, and they must be ready for this.

Another important point - is the infrastructure ready to service the multiply increasing number of remote connections? Is there enough server capacity? Will the current Internet channel withstand the load? Do you have enough VPN licenses? All these questions require verification and a very quick solution in case you are not ready.

One more point concerns telephony. Even if everyone works from home, someone has to answer your company's main phone number when they call. If you haven't already taken steps to handle incoming calls with remote workers, it's time to do so.

Security

When work moves outside the secured perimeters, the security issues are many times greater. Therefore, it is important to make a distinction - what needs to be defended harshly and uncompromisingly, and what is not. For example, if an employee only participates in chats and calls, where there is no confidential information, it makes no sense to force him to log in through a VPN. Also, it is not always necessary to keep all applications for VPN, in many situations it is enough to have a properly configured Web Application Firewall and proper testing of the application with vulnerability scanners or pentests.

On the other hand, in areas where security is critical, mass remote work requires protection from specific threats associated specifically with remote access. There are many, and I will not list them here. I will just say that in a situation where it is necessary to switch to remote work quickly, to give a realistic assessment and draw up the correct scenario, an external auditor with high security competencies and developed industry expertise, such as Softline, is best able to do it.

And one more point: in the daily control of the security of infrastructure with massive remote access, in many cases it will be optimal to use cybersecurity services, such as DLP as a service, SOC as a service provided by a qualified and responsible external provider.

Communication and collaboration

It doesn't make sense to talk a lot about everyday collaboration tools, everyone already knows and uses tools like Office 365 or G Suite every day. I would like to note only two points. First, Office 365 licensing can be easily extended to personal computers. Second, I'd like to draw your attention to Teams, which has proven to be a great alternative to other collaboration environments and is gaining popularity.