​It has now become mandatory for companies around the World to work from home. Whether you’re a newbie or a WFH expert, here’s what you need to do to stay productive while working from home.​

All major global companies have now rolled out the mandatory work-from-home policies amidst the spread of Covid-19. But there are a lot of businesses and home users who didn't get the time to organize their WFH Infrastructure. And lots of businesses due to the lock-down situation are unable to enable their WFH Environment.
​
Some employees will be working from home for the first time, which means figuring out how to stay on task in a new WFH environment may lead to usability issues with collaborative application tools. But there are ways to deliver results and avoid going crazy, from setting up a good work-space to the way you talk to your team and how you collaborate with shared resources, communicate using Virtual Conference software with your team or clients could be dealt with ease.

Some organisations were not ready for the immediate shifting of their employees to work-from-home, some had just started using free remote support tools which could potentially expose their business to a risk of malware attacks and other threats given that the data may not be secured as most users hold access to office computers without any data security enabled. What ever so, the rush to implement a work from home policy has exposed organisations to huge risks.

The pressure due to coronavirus forcing companies to shift to WFH could lead to some compromising on security as lots of companies are switching to potentially unsecured work environments, Hence, this may become the perfect opportunity for hackers and cyber-criminals to attacks computers and servers. 

No business would like to experience a data breach due to an unplanned work from home policy, nor would they want a situation where their staff members aren't equipped to carry out their work properly. We can assist here to secure your work from home environment with  minimum budget.

Create a WFH PLAN for your business.
Evaluate the readiness to adapt remote working in your organisation for what your current IT Environment is and what needs to be done to enable Work-From-Home.

• ​Does your organisation have the necessary infrastructure in place or not?
• Are your employees equipped with computers at home?
• Do they have issued laptop devices so they can access the office network remotely?
• Are the mentioned devices personal or company-owned? 
• Do they have access to internet at home?
  
  

USER LEVEL SECURITY and ACCESS MANAGEMENT

• Setup the devices to be used to access the office network and software tools to support remote working, 
• Implement user-identity authentication and access management solutions i.e. verifying the identity of users with secured authentication.
• Install an Endpoint Security and Antivirus Solution to control and monitor user activities.
• Block usage of USB and Media Cards for home computers to protect against data leakage. 

TEST your WFH Environment

• Ensure employees can access office servers and work properly.
• Servers should have proper power backup.
• Office Computers accessed remotely should be secured and have  their activity log maintained thoroughly.
• Home users should have good internet connectivity for smooth working.
• Provide proper training and test all users to connect simultaneously to check load performance.

COMMUNICATE WITH EMPLOYEES regarding the WFH policy.

• All employees should be fully aware of their rights and responsibilities
• Share policy documents via mail before using a computer from home for work.
• Users should accept privacy policy or other required measures that need to be implemented
• Hold training sessions with each employee via a webinar or one-to-one instructions,
• Give updates on policy changes and send information emails to staff well in advance.

MONITOR THREATS and SYSTEM LOGS

• You will need to improve security and performance,
• You can monitor remote working environment through real-time monitoring and threat prevention programmes that you must have implemented within your IT infrastructure.  
• Use these monitoring systems to stay alert against threats and learn more about how to improve remote performance.

​
SUPPORT YOUR WFH USERS in adapting to the new environment.

• Your support Help-desk team should be available to support users and help them adapt to an entirely new working environment.
• There will be connectivity issues with home users at times so provide them with and alternate data cards for internet connectivity,
• Ensure your Business IT support Team is well equipped and available 24x7 to help users resolve problems.
• Many small businesses do not have a dedicated support team, in that case your IT Vendor supporting you should be well accustomed with your team in order to support your business. ​ ​​

• A dedicated work-space where you can sit and work peacefully.
• An office or personal computer as provided by your organisation.
• A good internet connection or a 3G/4G Data Card for alternate internet connection.
• Video conferencing and chat apps like Zoom, Meet, Teams, etc
• A good pair of Earphones or a headset to host or join meetings online.
• Self-discipline and a healthy, productive mindset, take breaks, etc as used to do in office.
• Stay-in-Touch with your colleagues online. 
  

We are an IT Consulting Company to an Advertising Company, managing their complete IT Infrastructure from the last 25 years taking care of Hosting, Email, Website, Software, Compliance, Computers and Server. Now our client has approx. 50+ computers in which mostly 50% users work on desktop with dedicated software accessing data from server on premises and 50% have laptops. 

Problem Area.
It was Friday afternoon when it was being planned for a lock-down on Sunday as seen on all news channels. My client asked me to give just 2 desktop computer access to two employees and the rest to be planned on Monday. My foresight gave me an advantage that I could sense a permanent lock down situation for the next 15-20 days. So I advised my client that we will not get time to manage things on Monday to setup WFH Environment and we were not prepared to buy and implement anything new immediately. So we starting working on the plan i had in mind.

Solution Provided.
We were lucky that we had our mails hosted on G-Suite and had Office 365 Business Application, few other agency specific software and Seqrite End Point Security installed on all computers. So we were not worried about remote software and security initially, Now I quickly started taking action and my first step was to setup one email id on G-Suite and add all Desktop Computers to Chrome Remote Desktop, a feature available for remote access in G-Suite. which came to our rescue. Now Chrome Remote Desktop requires a PIN to access each PC remotely which gave me the ability to setup a separate PIN for each PC, which was the basic security I could implement in a short duration.

So now i was ready with a basic WFH Solution for my client. As Monday approached and it came out as expected that there will be a total lock down for next 15 days. 

How, we at RSPL Managed the situation and enabled client employees to WFH.
I already had a setup at home to provide remote support to my clients in India, US & UK and various part of the World to provide Managed IT Services remotely sitting at home. Me and my other Support Engineers are also equipped with High Speed Internet and Remote Support Software i.e. Zoho Assist which we have been using from the last 2 years, this works best for us as it's all integrated with our accounting software i.e Zoho Books and Help Desk Ticket management system i.e. Freshdesk.  

All users who had laptops are working as usual on their laptops from home. But for desktop users, we called each user and got them the Chrome Remote Access software on each user personal computer. So now the user could access their office desktop and work as if the user is working on his/her office desktop computer with all software and emails configured in place and all files and network shared resources available to them at home.

It took our team just one full day to call all users and everybody was WFH READY. There was a challenge with a few home computers as they were not updated or an had old OS installed. But we managed to bring 100% all users to work from home smoothly. 

With this kind of setup, there are few security issues which we are working on to resolve them. But we still have major control on our resources. This was the best that could be done in a few hours.