Security and Remote IT Management in 2021

The pandemic has forced many companies to modernize and adopt alternative ways to work. The digitization of the work environment has accelerated significantly in 2020. Home office and remote work continue to be an important part of the worldwide economy. For many IT professionals and managed service providers (MSPs), remote management always existed as a part of their business, especially in international companies as offices are often distributed across the globe. Mostly in these so-called “distributed companies”, service providers are not always on-site with their customers, and it is much more convenient, efficient, and effective for them to support their customers remotely.

 

Since the COVID-19 pandemic more and more employees are working from home. More than half of the workers who have started working from home since the pandemic had no prior experience with teleworking. In terms of remote management & monitoring, it’s very different and challenging to manage someone who works in an office environment vs working from home.

 

Typically, employees access IT systems from a controlled environment, such as from within an office on a known and trusted network. But when IT staff works from home, they use personal uncontrolled devices or shared computers on uncontrolled networks to access sensitive corporate or government information, for which compliance regulations often apply. It becomes challenging for IT admins to manage several branch offices, each with different requirements and safety measures, instead of managing a central location. Home networks are less secure than office networks and have weaker protocols with higher chances of cyber-attacks unless proper measures are taken. A single vulnerability can crash a network and put an entire company at risk.

 

Remote worker management checklist:

With many organizations extending their work-from-home policies, security practices are more important than ever. FBI has reported a 400% increase in cyberattacks since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, ransomware attacks are increasingly targeting SMBs. It is therefore imperative that security teams get better at controlling network access.

At a minimum, IT professionals should apply here below tips to not only protect their systems from cyber intrusion but also to secure their remote environments for employees or customers and better educate end-users about the risks.

 

  • Educate about phishing threats: 91% of successful data breaches start with a phishing attack, which means almost all cyberattacks are instigated from a malicious link or attachment that is only effective if an employee hasn’t been educated/informed about risks and fraud related to the scam. It is important to keep employees informed of the latest threats and train them to remain vigilant towards cyber threats. Cybercriminals are currently exploiting the fear of COVID-19 by focusing on relevant topics. Through understanding the problems with their current security strategies, employees can improve their habits and help form a strong security perimeter for their organization.

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  • Integrate a patch management program: Patched software is safe software. It’s a process of managing a network of computers by regularly performing patch deployment to keep computers up to date. As it’s important to prevent employees from running old versions or even end-of-life software at home. Exemplary technology partners make it possible to automate the installation and updates of the software via third-party providers. Patch management fixes all vulnerabilities on your software and applications that are susceptible to cyber-attacks, helping your employees strengthen their cybersecurity.
  • Enhance your home wireless network: When protecting home networks, it makes sense to think a little outside the box. For example, how secure are the employees’ router settings, and which IOT do they use that are connected to the home network? Wi-fi comes with lots of security issues and a vulnerable router makes a vulnerable access point. Securing home routers will allow users to keep stock of all connected devices. This requires a thorough inventory of all networked devices.
  • Multi-layered security: Keeping your business protected against cyber-attacks is a challenge therefore, multi-layer security—also known as the “multi-level security” approach to cybersecurity is the best solution for organizations. Layered security is a network security approach that uses several components to protect your operations with multiple levels of security measures. This can start with user training, followed by URL or script blocking, then file scans and integrity monitoring, and so on. Even if an attacker breaks through a line of defense, the next one is ready to stop intruders from breaching your networks.
  • Have a disaster recovery plan (DRP) ready: If all else fails, a robust disaster recovery plan will ensure you get up and running as quickly as possible. It’s a well-documented and structured approach that describes how an organization can quickly resume after an unplanned incident. It must include a plan for business continuity, protecting sensitive data, minimizing financial losses and disruption for end-users, and a plan for responding to incidents to comply with all relevant regulations. Similarly, companies should ensure that their technology and service providers understand the importance of protecting this type of unknown environment.

 

At this point in time, nobody knows what the “new normal” will look like. For many companies, the biggest challenge lays in finding the right balance between remote and in-office work, followed by learning how to manage remote teams and facilitating effective collaboration. All these skills will take time to master as IT professionals are learning and adapting as they go. Companies must ensure security and business continuity at the same time in this new hybrid world.

Cloud vs. On-premise: How The Cloud Operating Models can help in Covid-19 Crises

ON PERMISES VS CLOUD

The dramatic spread of COVID-19 has not only threatened lives and livelihoods but also businesses worldwide. The corona crisis has confronted companies and employees with enormous challenges and fear among staffs and other stakeholders. Organizations around the world are facing twin anxieties, for how long and how sever will the COVID19 outbreak will be and how can they prepare for a new organizational structure that can help them keep pace sustainably. In addition to technological, organizational and motivational difficulties, IT teams often had to do with the capacity limits of the solutions used.

 

The biggest challenge for organizations was to face a sudden and dramatic situation in which from one day to the next suddenly a few hundred employees were working from their home office. This rapid shift to remote work has brought on other challenges of scalability and flexibility along with effective performance measurement, management, and accountability for organizations. In this suddenly almost exclusively virtual world, a high level of scalability was required, which is more difficult or easier to achieve depending on the operating model – in your own data center or in the cloud.

 

Even before the corona crisis, it was a long debate on the “right” choice between cloud and on-premise monitoring? Several ways in which solutions can be used have occupied many decision-makers and divided their opinions. But in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, your choice might impact your company’s long-term sustainability and profitability. Here below is the overview of different operating models and the advantages they offer to organizations.

 

Overview of Operating Models: In general, software solutions are available in two modes, on-premise and cloud-based. On one hand we have “on-premise software” that are installed locally, on a company’s own computers and servers, data center whereby maintenance, safety and updates also need to be taken care by internal employees. On the other hand, we have “Cloud-based software” that are hosted on the vendor’s servers and accessed through a web browser.

Even in cloud, companies have the choice to opt for a private or public cloud. A private cloud is not shared with any other organization. The private cloud user has the cloud to themselves. By contrast, a public cloud is a cloud service that shares computing services among different customers, even though each customer’s data and applications running in the cloud remain hidden from other cloud customers.

 

Flexera™2020 State of The Cloud Report shows that 92% of organization’s IT environment is in the cloud today, as only 8% say their total IT environment is all on-premises. 93 % of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy versus 87 % have a hybrid cloud strategy. 59 % of respondents who answered a question about COVID-19 expect cloud use to exceed plans due to the pandemic.

 

According to the study, cloud top challenges are security, spend, governance and expertise. 83% of enterprises indicate that security is a challenge, followed by 82% for managing cloud spend and 79% for governance. On the other hand, for cloud beginners, lack of resources/expertise is the top challenge, for advanced cloud users, managing cloud spend is the top challenge.

 

Covid-19 Challenges: In order to stop the spread of coronavirus, the home office requirements are obliged by the federal and state governments. It’s a huge challenge for many companies because their IT infrastructure reached its capacity limits. In the event of unexpected growth, they are faced with an increasing need for storage and services. In addition to that, it’s difficult to predict when any contraction will occur. On one hand, the significantly increased access to corporate servers by home workers has led to problems with accessibility and connection quality for many. A flexible and short-term expansion of capacities was therefore required – which works differently depending on the type of company. On the other hand, in the event of shrinkage, the most important thing is to be able to scale down and keep a grip on costs. Thus, it’s a huge challenge for companies to make the storage strategy more flexible, scalable and responsive. A study conducted by LogicMonitor revels that 87% of global IT decision makers agree that the current COVID-19 pandemic will cause organizations to accelerate their migration to the cloud.

 

Both operating models have their advantage and inconvenient:

The advantages of operating on cloud (regardless of whether it is a public or a private cloud) are generally associated with reducing internal IT staff responsibilities as your cloud storage will be managed by third company. Their responsibilities will be limited when it comes to install new software patches or updates, security and maintenance, thus they can concentrate on other important tasks. In addition, they can access real-time reporting and analysis of data from anywhere, which is very crucial for home office during covid19 crises. Company’s online data is secured and encrypted and backed-up at regular intervals, with Cloud Computing, it’s all included in the package. To help companies keep their initial costs low, organizations regularly pay for cloud-storage on a monthly use basis. No matter if you’re scaling up or scaling down, cloud vendors can easily adjust their prices to meet your budget. A major downside of cloud is that you may lose access to your data in case of a connection outrage and can stop the productivity. Plus, you run the risk of unauthorized personnel accessing your data.

 

The advantages of operating an on-premise solution are generally related to the greater security and independency and full control of internal IT, that on-premises solutions and storage give their data.  As that organization have the full control over their hardware’s locally, upgrades can be tightly controlled. But that also means that the company is solely responsible for the configuration, operation, maintenance and security of the data center. And also, that it has to find quick solutions for changing conditions, such as in corona times, and implement every step necessary for this in-house. This requires appropriate hardware, networks, bandwidth, know-how and time resources. One of the major benefits of on-premises storage is that it doesn’t require users to have an internet connection to access data. So, the fear of losing productivity due to connection loss is non existing.

 

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DMS: Facts that Encourages to go Paperless in 2021

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The digital transformation due to the pandemic has led companies to adapt work from the home concept. Remote work went from an offer, that only a few companies made, to an inevitable and massive shift in the way that people work around the world. The percentage of home offices is expected to double in 2021, according to a survey from Enterprise Technology Research (ETR).

These statistics show that remote work is not likely to decline this year or anytime soon. It’s important as a company to set up digitally and to ensure that employees can work flexibly from their home office. But in many companies, some of the important business processes still require employees to use paper forms and they can’t access the corporate data they need immediately from home. Thus, 2021 is the best time to go paperless so companies don’t have to deal with employees’ unproductivity along with lost, damaged, or misplaced documents which can easily result in lost data, privacy violations, or lost customers.

 

What is the paperless office?

The term is actually self-explanatory. A paperless office means saving on paper-based documents and using only digitally-supported formats for all business processes. The idea behind building a paperless office has been around for a few decades since it was first conceptualized as “The office of the future” in an article in Business Week in 1975. A paperless environment closely resembles an office utilizing integrated information systems with multiple software tools to reduce paper consumption and improve efficiency in retrieving electronic documents. Paperless environments increase office productivity and collaboration and also helps to manage the company’s data in a more efficient way with the right processes.

 

Advantages of the paperless office

Nowadays, companies can no longer avoid digital work; the advantages are too obvious to affect pretty much all professional fields. Businesses that are always looking for new and efficient ways to optimize their operations must take a look at the benefits of a paperless office here below:

  • Sustainability (reduce printing costs, etc. – better for the environment)
  • More efficient time management through productive work
  • Collaborative work with several people or teams
  • Space and material savings
  • Flexible work environment and mobility, which is essential especially in corona times, but also in the future
  • Central storage in digital form – everyone can access it from anywhere
  • Automatic Data Retention & Digital Backups
  • The search function enables documents to be found quickly (effective time management)
  • Future viability and competitiveness
  • Departments become more productive; more time spent on important tasks
  • Simplified communication using digital tools and media

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While technology supports the move to paperless business practices, not all organizations can afford the IT infrastructure necessary to make the transition. A small and medium-sized business (SMB) often lacks the resources and IT infrastructure to quickly increase server performance and/or expand storage capacity both of which are required for paperless transition.

Cloud systems are known as the foundation for the paperless office and to instantly increase companies’ IT infrastructure. For businesses that are interested in moving to electronic storage and retrieval of documents, cloud computing offers a cost-effective means of making the change.

 

One important technology that enables a paperless office to efficiently capture, store, secure, and retrieve information is an electronic document management system (EDMS).  Document management is becoming increasingly important as the concept of a paperless office is becoming an everyday reality, especially with the growth in cloud storage services.  With a DMS businesses can create, track and store digitized documents. It manages structured data and is focused on documents in formats as Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, etc. The key purposes of a DMS are regulatory compliance and workflow management. DMS applications also have advanced imaging and scanning capabilities, such as optical character recognition (OCR), handprint character recognition (HCR), optical mark recognition (OMR), and more.

 

Conclusion:

The paperless system offers organizations many benefits including increased employee efficiency, productivity, streamline workflows, and information security. The paperless office is a process and not a one-time thing, therefore this transformation requires a certain discipline, the courage to change, and requires good communication within the company. Organizations can use numerous solutions to help them attain paperless environments. But the first step and the most commonly used method of reducing paper is the digitization of current documents.

With the growing availability of electronic document management systems, implementing a good document management solution can go a long way in enabling your organization to reduce cost, improve your business process, increase customer satisfaction, as well as improve employee efficiency and comfort and increase productivity. Contact-us any time to help you find the right document management software for your business needs.

 

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