In light of government advice following the coronavirus outbreak, many businesses have prepared for home working. We take a look at some of the IT solutions that ensure your team has everything they need to do their job efficiently and securely.
Many business owners have been reluctant to make the switch to home or remote working in the past, however the ongoing health emergency may have left them with little choice. In the medium term, we also expect many more businesses to join those that have already transitioned to home working. Remote working isn’t something to be concerned about though, provided your staff have the right tools in place to be able to do their jobs. Having a good laptop or PC with a reliable internet connection is a given, but there are other IT solutions that are required for effective and secure working...
Office 365
In terms of remote working, there are some really useful features of Office 365 specifically designed to make distance working quicker and easier. Team Sites allows multiple people to collaborate on documents and folders. You can view time logs, see who has made changes and edit permissions without being in the same location. Office 365 also comes with email functionality (which has its obvious uses), but there are other communication tools like Skype (which has replaced Lync) and Teams that make employee communication easier. Some Office 365 licenses allow for installation on up to 5 phones, 5 tablets, and 5 PCs or Macs per user, so if you are using a home device or have been given a laptop specifically to use to work from home you may be able to install Office on it without paying for a new licence.
VPNs
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a tunnel that allows access to internal files from a remote location as though you were in the office. Users log into their account and can then access a company network from anywhere with internet access. Modern VPN tunnels are heavily encrypted so you don’t need to worry about anybody snooping on your data.
Hard Drive Encryption
As individuals are responsible for their work technology while working from home, there is an increased risk of loss or theft of devices or laptops. The cost of the hardware is one thing, but the loss of data is potentially devastating to businesses of all sizes. You can take precautions by encrypting your company laptop hard drives and any important files which are being used on employee devices. If users are using personal devices, then encryption should be enforced in a company IT policy. If you store any company data on laptops used for working from home, Windows 10 comes with a built in encryption program called Bitlocker which is fairly straightforward to set up.
IP Phones
If your company has an internal phone system then you may be able to make and receive calls as if you were in the office. This is done by setting up a handset at home using a VPN or internet routing. Calls to your business number can then be taken outside of the office and can be transferred to other members of staff, who are also working from home. Some phone systems also have the option to set up call forwarding, so you can redirect calls from your desk phone to your mobile phone.
Remote Desktop Services
These types of services allow users to take control of a remote computer or virtual machine over a network connection. Windows comes with Remote Desktop already installed, however there are other services available such as LogMeIn. Some programs are too intensive to use over a VPN, but Remote Desktop Services allow you to connect to another machine and run the program from there.
Remote Data Backup
Remote backup services take any data that you have stored on your device and backs it up onto a secure location each night (or at a convenient time). Why are backups useful? We go through it in detail here, but as mentioned, the increased risk of theft or accidental damage leaves your data vulnerable. If your employees have remote data backup enabled, even if the hardware is stolen, their files will be available in the cloud.
This wide scale shift to working from home doesn’t have to be disruptive, and in fact may lead to a much more flexible, efficient and dynamic work force in the future. ASK4 Solutions are able to provide and advise on all of the remote IT solutions listed above to help yours and your team’s transition to home working easier. If you would like more information on how to implement them in your business, please get in touch.
