During the emergency phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies asked their employees to work from home, or at least offered them the opportunity to do so. But how exactly do you create the technical prerequisites to ensure that day-to-day work, the necessary communication and easy access to data are possible remotely?
Paessler offers guidance on how to prepare the infrastructure needed to keep the business running even at a critical time like the Covid-19 emergency. First, it is essential to identify a team to carefully analyse the company's situation in order to create the basis for any further action.
Step 1: Key departments
Consider which divisions are most important for the success of the company. This varies from one company to another and it is really difficult to generalise. In our case, the key divisions are the support team and the sales team. Even in a situation like the emergency situation dictated by Covid-19 we have to guarantee regular support to our customers. In addition, the sales team must be able to work without restrictions.
As with any other company, business operations cannot be restricted or even stopped. Prioritise the divisions that must continue to be operational to maintain the core business. All these departments must be able to work from home. Remember that you need to provide internal support to your departments as well.
Step 2: Hardware and Software
Create a list of all employees in the key departments defined in step 1 and check whether these employees already have a mobile device and the necessary accessories. These include webcams and headsets, for example.
Determine whether you are able to provide employees who work from home with a mobile device (e.g. by checking their existing inventory) or whether they are willing to use their private devices. It will be useful to note in this list which software is used by colleagues during their usual office work and the minimum applications that need to be made available to enable them to work from home.
An example: is the accounting department able to handle bank transfers? Is the human resources department able to process payroll? Is specific hardware such as an Usb protection key required?
Step 3: Remote access
Priority has now been established between the various departments and the necessary applications have been identified. Now the IT infrastructure has to be considered. Under normal circumstances, probably only a certain percentage of employees access IT systems from home or remotely.
But what happens when almost all employees need remote access? One or more of the following solutions should be activated:
- Direct access
- Remote access (Terminal Services)
- Remote access to personal company workstation
- SSL VPN
But regardless of how colleagues access the company's network from outside, one must first ask the question: "Is the bandwidth of your ISP sufficient for this emergency?"
If employees have complained in the past that remote access is very slow or even impossible, you should focus on this problem first. You need to check bandwidth utilisation, quickly determine whether a client or server is causing unusually high traffic and act accordingly. This makes it easy to determine whether an increase in bandwidth is required when suddenly more colleagues than usual need to access the network from home.
Almost or equally important as a good and stable connection are licences. What use is a perfect Internet connection if colleagues cannot use it because of an insufficient number of licences? We realised early on that the number of licences available would not be sufficient to enable all employees to access our network from home or on the move. So we had to upgrade the licences to guarantee a higher number of accesses.
If the ISP provides sufficient bandwidth and licences are sufficient for all employees, the following points should also be considered:
- Is the firewall configured correctly (accessible from outside) and is it of adequate size?
- Are the backbone switches configured correctly?
- Are there enough licences available? Especially for remote access?
- Do all the servers that are used in this area (e.g. Terminal Server and Direct Access Server) have sufficient capacity?
- Is multi-factor authentication required? If so, are all employees registered?
- Do some employees urgently need a VPN connection because they cannot run or access an application via direct access? For example, a softphone or file server?
- Is there a risk of overloading due to the increased number of accesses (both hardware and software)?
Step 4: Testing
If possible, it is better to carry out a test before the emergency occurs in order to identify weak points and be able to correct them in time. In this way, it can also be determined whether there is a basis for a company-wide home office operation. In addition, the downsizing of the IT infrastructure can be organised in good time and the future scenario can be looked at in a more relaxed manner.
