Working from home in a COVID-19 scenario
Remote working from home or other remote locations has been on a steadily upward trend for the last few years. The tools to allow remote collaboration, with VPN access to file stores and the proliferation of web and mobile apps has driven this trend. Indeed, some businesses today are staffed mainly by remote employees. (See the excellent book Remote. Office Not Required from the makers of Basecamp on how they operate a remote workforce.) Obviously, being mostly remote works best for businesses that produce digital products. It may not be feasible for all organisations, even those who operate mainly in the digital realm.
Many businesses are not able to allow the majority of their staff to work away from their main offices. Unfortunately, we are in the early stages of a global event that might require a lot more work from remote locations – namely the ongoing spread of the COVID-19 outbreak caused by a novel coronavirus. As I write this on the 2nd of March, there are frequent news reports about public events and conferences being cancelled as a precaution, and of manufacturing facilities being shut down due to staff contracting the virus. The latest shutdown I saw was to Samsung and LG factories in South Korea. The Financial Times has published several articles in the last few days about UK and international companies either sending staff home or preparing for remote mass working. And in Ireland, Google instructed their staff to work from home this week after an employee reported flu like symptoms. Results on whether the staff member has COVID-19 or not are still pending but Google are following the precautionary principle, and also using this as a test of their remote working contingency planning and systems.
All this means that many more businesses may have the need to provide remote working tools thrust upon them if they don’t already have the infrastructure in place to support it. Everyone should be planning for the eventuality now. The Irish Department of Business, Enterprise, and Innovation have produced a business continuity planning checklist that organisations can use to instigate a plan or to update their existing business continuity plans. The COVID-19 checklist is an update to their influenza pandemic preparedness checklist that was updated last month.
Now is the time to plan for a wider spread of COVID-19 that will allow staff who are not sick, but who shouldn’t travel to the office, to work from home. Renaissance and our partners have many solutions that can make this possible in a secure and easy way. Contact us today to discuss your needs or read on for an overview of some of the things that need to be considered.
Remote Collaboration Tools
Email is still the foundational business collaboration tool. This is unlikely to change soon. So email can be, along with mobile phones, a bedrock safety net should remote working suddenly become necessary. But other more elaborate and functionally rich options are available.
Tools to allow for remote collaboration have proliferated and improved a lot in recent years. From video conferencing and chat solutions such as Skype, Zoom, and GoToMeeting, through to full collaboration hubs such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. The latter both deliver full collaboration via discussion groups, direct chat, video calls, file sharing, and the ability to include guests from outside a business in all of these. It may be that your organisation has some of these tools in place already, especially if you are using Office 365 for email. If so then your Office 365 license may already include Teams. It would be worth investigating expanding the number of licenses in place if required so that all staff can use the tools already in place. All everyone working remotely will need is an Internet connection in their house or via their mobile phone.
With an increase in remote working comes an increased risk from cybercriminals. Making sure that anyone logging into collaboration tools is authenticated correctly is vital, as is protecting the login credentials they use. The best way to do this is to use a multi-factor authentication system that prompts all users who attempt to login for additional information that only they would have. There are various solutions available to do this, many of which can be deployed rapidly via a cloud service. And rapid deployment will be crucial in a pandemic related scenario. Renaissance and our partners can discuss your needs, then recommend, design, and deploy a suitable multi-factor authentication solution.
Other Options
If a modern collaboration tool like Microsoft Teams or Slack are not in use, or can’t be adopted, then other options are available. As outlined in the previous section, the use of email and mobile phones can provide a good basic level of remote collaboration. But anyone working remotely will still need to access business applications and files that they had access to in the office.
The way to do this is to provide remote access over the Internet. This will require strong security such as that provided by a secure VPN solution. A VPN allows a secure tunnel to be set up between the office network and the remote device, and then the remote user can work as if they were sitting in the office. Subject to the speed of their network connection of course. Once connected via a secure VPN, users can access all the business applications and files they could access when in the office.
Many VPN solutions are available from the Renaissance partner community. Often as a software addition to some network security solution that an organisation may already have deployed. Contact us to find out more. It should be noted that strong multi-factor authentication should also be used with a VPN solution to ensure the connecting remote user is who they say they are.
Encrypt Everything!
Even if contingency plans for a pandemic or other event are never invoked, all data at rest and in transit over a network should be encrypted. This means that all the storage in laptops and mobile devices should have the built-in encryption enabled. Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, Apple iOS, and Android all include secure encryption as standard. Make sure it is enabled. This can be done remotely using an Enhanced Network Access Control (ENAC) solution. An ENAC solution allows devices to be monitored and managed remotely. If you don’t have one in place, we can advise you. These are common for mobile devices, and formally called Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions. But an ENAC subsumes MDM systems into a more comprehensive management framework that is a better fit for the current rapidly changing IT landscape.
In addition to encrypting the internal storage within laptops and mobile devices, any external USB storage or disks should also be encrypted. Some remote users who are on slow network connections from home may need to have business data on a portable device to do their job. This data needs protecting. Renaissance supply ClearCrypt USB storage solutions that are the best in the industry when it comes to protecting data on removable and portable storage. These ClearCrypt devices all have a number pad, and a PIN protects the data on then. The storage cannot be used on a computer without entering the PIN.
Data transfers over the network to and from remote devices should also be encrypted using the latest TLS 1.3 standard. This encryption can be enabled on the border security devices in place such as the firewall or remote access gateway.
Conclusion
The tools to allow anyone to work remotely and still collaborate with their colleagues and other businesses are available today. Even if the current COVID-19 outbreak doesn’t progress to a full pandemic, at some point for every organisation, there will be an event that requires staff to be able to work remotely. Now is the time to plan for such eventualities and implement the tools required. Even if not fully used soon, the ability to work remotely will be a boon for many staff today - which will make for a happier and more productive team. A win for all concerned. Contact us today to start a discussion on how Renaissance and our partner network can update your existing remote working toolset, or implement a new solution from scratch if you don’t have one in place.