Johannesburg, 13 Jul 2020
The current COVID pandemic has paralysed large parts of business with significant movement limitations, occupancy restrictions and, in some cases, complete shutdowns. Now, governments and businesses must determine what is required to get back to some sense of normalcy while maintaining safety of employees and customers. The biggest hurdles will be safety-driven rules and guidelines that restrict occupancy, including corporate offices.
The current work from home (WFH) situation and lower office occupancy has brought its own set of issues. Connectivity and an acceptable experience using corporate applications being most critical. Technologies that were one considered as ‘cutting edge’ are now commonplace.
“Cloud technologies have assisted greatly in enabling users to literally work from anywhere. There are, however, some points that assist with this user experience. Cloud technology enables all remote users to be an extension of the corporate network,” said Pete Nel, Business Development Executive for Extreme Networking technology at Duxbury Networking.
1. Quality of service
There are many forms of connectivity being deployed, some better than others. What the WFH user expects is a similar experience to the corporate network. That means deploying quality of service to the home network. By deploying enterprise-class WiFi in the home, this is now achievable. Current cloud-managed access points are available with enterprise class quality of service. These can also be ‘zero touch’ provisioned, configured and optimised, all via the cloud. This enables users with slower connectivity to prioritise Teams calls over Netflix or YouTube, or Salesforce over Xbox 360.
2. WFH security
Endpoint security is a must-have. But not all devices on the home network are protected correctly. “Throw in a teenager with a phone, tablet and laptop, and issues can quickly arise. Over and above endpoint security, VPN connectivity and a layer 2-7 firewall in access points is imperative. Once again, all set up and monitored via the cloud management system, allowing the WFH employee to get on with his or her job and not be a potential threat to the corporate network. This security should be built into the entire portfolio of products,” said Nel.
3. Cloud security
This pertains to both the cloud platform and the hosting provider. Standards such as ISO27001 and GDPR should be adhered to. This ensures protection from the client to the cloud to ensure the highest level of regulation, compliance and data privacy.
4. Agility
All services, changes, configurations and enhancements need to be performed quickly and easily to enable a quality experience when working from anywhere. These tasks should be available for the corporate IT employee, IT service provider or manufacturer to perform securely and quickly with minimal disruption to the user.
For more information, contact Duxbury Networking, +27 (0) 11 351 9800, info@duxnet.co.za, www.duxbury.co.za
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