As the holiday season approaches, many of us are preparing for a mix of work and festivities from the comfort of our homes.
While the world has evolved since the onset of the pandemic, remote work has become a way of life for countless individuals. In this rapidly changing landscape, the need for a secure and efficient work-from-home setup remains as critical as ever.
In this blog post, we’ve compiled a set of invaluable tips to help you establish a workspace that’s not only productive but also secure.
Whether you’re planning to juggle work alongside holiday celebrations or simply want to ensure that you can work effectively throughout the season, these tips will prove essential.
We understand that working remotely demands more than just a laptop and an internet connection – it requires a thoughtful approach to technology and cybersecurity.
Best remote work solutions for your business
Real-time support
The fact that remote workers are all allocated in different areas, sometimes different countries, doesn’t mean they are completely isolated from the company. Providing them with remote support and timely resolutions is extremely important to keep productivity high.
To provide remote workers with the help they need, most small-to-medium size businesses rely on Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to handle the IT support needs of their employees.
Don't stress over IT, leave IT to us!
Implement MFA and SSO
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is a security strategy that requires users to provide multiple credentials to verify their identity. Apart from providing the standard username and password, users are also prompted to verify at least two of the following credentials:
- Data generated by the user, such as a PIN or password.
- Property owned by the user, like a security key.
- Characteristics pertaining to the user, such as fingerprints.
While MFA is great on its own, it is even better when combined with a Single Sign-On solution (SSO). Single Sign-On whether it be Microsoft, Google, or Apple, maps your login credentials to the application you are using, thus simplifying the management of the username and password. This saves employees the hassle of remembering multiple passwords and saves them a lot of time.
Deploy security policies
Working remotely often involves making use of a variety of different devices, and they may not be company-issued. This scenario is known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). While most remote workers are usually lured by the convenience of working from any device available, this has cybersecurity considerations for employers, including things to never do on a work computer.
Defining a BYOD security policy is critical for maintaining your company’s security when employees are working from their own devices and ensuring they understand the importance of adhering to best practices while using both personal and work computers.
Set up SASE
SASE stands for Secure Access Service Edge. Many organizations still have applications on-premises, as well as a few popular applications that are being used by employees who are already in the cloud. Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Dropbox, Teams, Slack, SharePoint, Okta, and Zoom are just a few examples.
Having to tunnel all this data and all these applications through a corporate network and all of its security and policy tools has become a huge bottleneck.
Instead of this traditional approach to network and security solutions, SASE can deliver those same networking and security solutions to the distributed workforce at the edge, where they can be most effective.
Collaborate seamlessly with Unified Communications (UC)
Unified Communication (UC) platforms are essential to empower remote teams with tools that will enhance team collaboration.
Unified communications solutions allow employees to access all their communication tools from a single platform. Voice and video calls, instant messaging, fax, file sharing, email, and video conferencing are all handled through a single user interface. This improves teamwork by streamlining communication and saving time.
UC ensures a higher level of interaction throughout the entire workforce, which nowadays can be spread all over the world. It eliminates organizational silos and assures that no matter where you work, you have access to the same system.
At Wingman Solutions, we can guide you toward choosing the unified communication solutions that best suit your business needs.
Implementing Microsoft Teams: the best UC solution
Microsoft Teams has been growing in extraordinary popularity since its launch in 2017. Teams, which was created to replace Skype for Business, provides everything that a remote team wants. One-on-one discussions, group messaging, video meetings, and audio calls are available to employees.
Teams is an important aspect of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Outlook, Word, SharePoint, and other Microsoft products are all compatible with the service. Teams is a perfect fit if you currently use Microsoft productivity products.
Below, we list the Teams best features
It is fully integrated with Microsoft 365
Teams works wonderfully with Office 365 as a Microsoft product, which is ideal for distributed teams inside your organization. Teams is fully integrated with the Office 365 programs that your virtual teams use every day at work, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint, and Outlook.
Provides you with easy file sharing
Teams gives you access to all of your Office 365 applications in a centralized location, allowing remote teams to do a seamless remote collaboration. Its cloud storage capabilities allow you to access files and documents from OneDrive and SharePoint, as well as make calls and hold video conferences.
When you’re working on a project, you want everything to be in the same location. This is something that Teams excels at. Everything you need, including messages, meetings, notes, and documents, is (in most circumstances) in one spot. You can also communicate with coworkers who are online in real-time, making cooperation quick and simple.
Access to team meetings
It can be difficult to get things ready for meetings. An email contains the agenda, while another has the agreed-upon actions. What happened to the document you were meant to read before the call?
Teams make this process a lot easier. You may start chatting with the attendees about the agenda as soon as you create the meeting, exchange the files you need them to review and keep track of the meeting notes and to-dos as soon as you create the meeting. You can even see who the unidentified guests are that have been invited. Screen sharing is also easy to do inside Teams.
Create and manage tasks
The Tasks app gives Teams a unified task management experience by combining individual tasks from Microsoft To Do and team tasks from Planner in one place. Users can access Tasks as a tab in a channel inside individual teams or as an app on the left side of Teams. Users may monitor and manage all of their individual and team tasks, as well as prioritize their work, using My Tasks and Shared Plans. Teams’ desktop, online, and mobile interfaces all have Tasks.
Let’s work together
At Wingman Solutions, we count on an expert team and the best remote workforce solutions willing to help you empower your remote teams. From IT support to unified communication solutions, we cover them all. Give us a quick 15-minute call to start getting you the help your business needs.
