According to the Zug, a Switzerland based serviced office provider IWG, as of 2018, 70% of professionals globally work remotely one day a week, while 53% work remotely for at least half the week. Additionally, a recent Security Intelligence Survey, showed that BYOD policies are also on the rise—but device security still lags behind. The survey found that 60% of businesses currently let employees bring their own devices, but only 10% have a defined plan to authorize and secure them.
With the upward trend of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) in the workplace, employees have acclimated to a “work-on-the go” mentality. At this point, if you don’t have a plan that allows your team to safely work from anywhere, you are behind the times and have lower productivity.
A safe BYOD policy combined with an effective Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution will can increase productivity and job satisfaction for employees, since they can respond to work matters any time of day or night, while working on their own device.
One of the best benefits of MDM is that it allows your team to safely access the company network from outside of the office. Working “on-the-go” is a trend that is becoming more prevalent in our daily lives. Some olf the previous mentioned situations are neough to give any business owner anxiety.
With united endpoint protection technology, employers can manage secure policies such as encryption, passcodes, data loss, prevention, remote lock and wipe and patch management to keep data protected across all users. Having an MDM solution isn’t an option anymore it’s a necessity. Rare are the times you can find your entire company in the office on the same day and same time.
Virtual Private Network (VPN)
There are a number of ways that you can access your company’s network, with a Virtual Private Network (VPN) being one of the more secure options. With that said, there is also nothing more frustrating than connecting to a VPN for work purposes and getting “kicked” off a few minutes later. What if you are traveling and staying in a hotel? Hotels are notorious for blocking VPN access, which can hinder your connectivity to the network, and could lead to your finding workarounds that may compromise security.
Office 365
In today’s world, businesses must take managed security into account when it comes to any and all IT related matters. You are opening the doors to a potential hacker when you choose convenience over security. That’s where cloud-based services like Office 365 come in. With the ability to collaborate in real time combined with easy access to company documents and emails, this platform provides the security and access to work effectively outside of the office.
The Office 365 suite houses all of your emails, documents and productivity tools and makes them available from virtually anywhere. All you need is an internet connection and you can access anything you need from wherever you might be from your laptop, desktop or mobile phone application.
Collaboration
With so many employees working on the go, this allows you and your team members to collaborate and stay connected. You can also sync documents from any device so you are always working on the most current version. Along with this, Office 365 saves a local copy of your files to your computer, so you have to access to important documents when you’re offline too. Once you reconnect to the internet your changes get uploaded to the cloud and all new changes are downloaded to the computer.
OneDrive is another great feature that comes along with Office 365 and be considered your individual workspace. Each OneDrive account comes with at least 1 TB of space and it can house personal or work-related information that you don’t want to share with others.
Basically, if you are saving files specific to you or drafting files, project plans, etc., before you move them to SharePoint for input or make them available on Microsoft Teams, OneDrive is your place. Utilizing the Office 365 suite eliminates the stress of installing office products on every computer you use and alleviates the need for a VPN to access.
Other Benefits
Co-authoring also makes working remotely easier, particularly when you’re working on a project with multiple team members. Even if your team members are scattered in multiple locations, they will all have access to the most updated version of the file they are collaborating on.
They can also lock the document before editing so they’re not distracted by other team members editing in real time. This increases productivity. It incorporates edits immediately and eliminates time spent hunting for the right version of the file you need. It’s all right there in the cloud.
At the end of the day, your employees need to be able to work remotely and safely. Is your remote access plan allowing your employees to work as efficiently as they should be? Well, there is an easy solution for that.
At The TNS Group we make sure we are providing you with the services your company needs the most. Contact us today to discuss options to improve upon your remote access plan.
Categories: Managed Service Provider, MSP Blogs
