BNMC Blog

In March, when the stay-at-home orders first came down, and businesses started asking their employees to work from home, it was obvious that many of them were not prepared for this contingency. As the pandemic has gone on, however, businesses have had to adapt. Today, we thought we would look at some of the solutions and strategies that are being used by businesses to secure their endpoints with most of their workforce out of the office. 

With many businesses having to close their doors for the time being in response to COVID-19, many have started to see remote work as a preferable alternative to stopping their operations completely. Of course, as this is the first time that a sizable portion of these businesses have ever used remote employees, communications have suffered somewhat.

To help prevent this from being the case in your business, we wanted to share a few practices that will help you to more successfully integrate remote work into your organization.

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, many companies are working from home to facilitate social-distancing and keep their workforce healthy. However, it’s not as simple as sending your employees home, firing up personal laptops and getting back to work. Here are seven things you need to have lined up in order to successfully deploy your remote workforce.  

• Secure Remote Access: Employees should not have open access to everything on their work systems from their personal computers. This keeps company data protected. In order to be productive through this pandemic, however, employers will need to provide a secure connection utilizing VPN or remote access software. These solutions will mirror the employee’s work desktop without housing all of the data on the individual’s personal system, allowing them to seamlessly continue work.
• File Sharing Capabilities: While people will be working in isolation, they must still be able to collaborate. File sharing/group editing software will be critical to moving forward creative or documentation projects through real-time editing, commenting, and versioning. Software like Microsoft Office 365 Teams / Sharepoint,  Google G-Suite Docs or Dropbox for Business fill this need securely.
• Enterprise Level Antivirus: Basic home-level antivirus is not sufficient, particularly in secured industries. Extend your enterprise-level antivirus to home systems that will be accessing your network to create an added layer of protection. You may also consider deploying firewalls on top of individual’s home networks to create the same secure connection employees experience in your office.
• Video Conferencing: Meetings must go on while people work remote; however, voice-only leaves much to be desired in terms of tone and context. We highly recommend putting in place video conferencing options. You can implement something as simple as Google Duo/FaceTime, or something more feature intensive, like Zoom or GoTo Meeting.
• Messaging Software: You can’t just spin your chair around to talk to your co-worker when working remote, yet it’s not efficient to always pick up the phone. We recommend implementing a messaging software like Microsoft Teams or Slack to open communication channels and allow employees to continue to interact quickly and accurately. Utilizing these tools, you can set up one-on-one conversations or set up channels to facilitate team communication.

• Phone: A strong VoIP solution will allow employees to take their phone numbers remote to their cellphones without giving out their cellphone numbers. Office calls will transfer seamlessly to the employee’s cellphones, voice mails will be sent via email, and the employee can dial-out using a phone application to maintain office functionality.
• Remote Access Policy: Prior to providing access to your employees, put in place a clear access policy that acknowledges that your company monitors whatever they do while connected. Employees should be encouraged to act as if they are on site even while working remote and reminded that punishments for doing something illegal/against company policy will apply.

The COVID-19 situation is ever-changing. Schools across the nation have been closed and events have been cancelled. While it may make sense to keep your employees on-site for now, we believe it’s important to have a plan should you need to close your physical offices. Getting these seven pieces of the puzzle in line will prepare you to take your workforce remote. For assistance implementing these things, contact us at (978) 482-2020 or  .

To those who weren’t around BEFORE the Internet became an irreplaceable business tool, it’s almost hard to imagine how businesses operated when this tool didn’t exist. Storing sensitive data has never been such an easy thing to do but at what cost? It is undeniable that the Internet has opened doors for not only us, but criminals as well. Today we discuss how these doors can easily be secured with the implementation of a virtual private network, or VPN.

Does your business use remote workers? If you currently don’t, you should know that there are several benefits of allowing your staff to work outside of the confines of your office, but you have to be careful. These days, with the threat landscape as it is, it is important that if you are going to allow remote workers, that you have a strategy in place. Let’s take a look at some of the tools you will need if you want to take advantage of remote workers.