How Managed IT Services are Ably Assisting Companies Cope With Remote Working

If you believe your office space will bustle again with employees, it is nothing short of a wishful thinking. And that’s because the efficacy of the Covid 19 vaccines is yet to proven. Meanwhile, as the surge in infection rates across regions continue unabated, employers will be compelled to allow employees to work from homes.

According to a recent Gartner survey finding, 74% of 317 interviewed CFOs expect that 5% of their workforce will opt for a permanent work from home after the end of the pandemic. 

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It started as a fun concept to work in your pjs.  But to meet productivity levels, workload doubled.  Gradually it turned into a real nightmare for both employees and employers. Long working hours have pushed employees to the edge of exhaustion. And the primary reason for this is a company’s inability to stretch technology beyond a point.

Technology infrastructure in an official workspace is far more robust than at a personal space. Employers are being forced to live up with major tech headaches like connectivity, compliance, and security issues. These factors are solely responsible for the long working hours.

A global survey conducted by technology company; Riverbed stated that 94% of company executives cited technology problems that disrupted their productivity while employees worked from home.  

In response to this crisis, managed IT services providers have stepped up to assist companies who are struggling to adapt this transition to remote working.

Roles of Managed IT Services Providers in Mitigating the Remote-Work-induced Technology Challenges

The gradual acceptance of remote working has driven the adoption of cloud, network access and communication technologies. For most of the small and midsize companies, IT staff are well versed in supporting and maintaining home-grown software rather than cloud technologies. To keep pace with today’s remote-work driven IT needs, companies have begun to realize the importance of relying on managed IT services. Here’s a look at the critical role that will be played by managed IT services providers to mitigate remote work-induced tech troubles.

Robust cloud support– It is not an exaggeration when experts state cloud is the backbone of remote working.

Results of a survey conducted by brokerage firm Instinet stated that 68% of CIOs cited cloud services to be their topmost priority in the current year. 

However, the buck does not stop at just procuring cloud technologies. You need to ask yourself whether you have all the required support and best practices in place for a safe and easy utilization of cloud services. If your answer is not a definitive yes, then you must rely on the expertise of managed IT services providers. They will assist you in using cloud technologies, the way it should be.

• Managed IT services providers bring the necessary identity and access management (IAM) tools to ensure access to data and resources only to authorized users.
• They assist in setting the right configurations for compliance for different sectors who are using cloud services.
• They bring a robust cloud management platform that aids to optimize cloud usage, costs, automating manual steps, setting compliance and security measures.

Continuity in IT support– It goes without saying that IT staff shortfall will continue to plague your operations in the next few years as remote work becomes a norm. But this should not result in an operational downtime. Managed IT service providers have an abundance of skilled and experienced IT professionals which enable them to render more efficient and faster services. They deploy engineers to fill in the absence of your inhouse staff. These engineers are cross trained to support supplemental as well as augmented IT services. In case, the assigned engineer is unavailable, the provider will delegate another competent engineer to remotely support your IT issues.

Build a firewall security for remote workers– One of the topmost challenges faced by organizations struggling to adapt to the remote work culture is security issues. For most of them, security best practices went for a toss when their cybersecurity team had to push for 100% remote workforce.

A survey conducted with 200 cybersecurity and IT gatekeepers confirmed that remote working caused a 20% surge in security breach incidents. 

It takes more than the capability of your existing IT staff to mitigate the security risks.

• Managed IT services providers implement threat models that detect dubious authentication behavior in the form of VPN brute-force, password spraying on the VPN or active directory.
• They regularly apply security patches to prevent ransomware attackers from taking advantages of the loopholes in the spread connectivity networks.
• Managed IT services providers set up firewalls that establishes filters based on phrases, domains, IP addresses, among others. These filter options prevent employees from using company assets to visit non-work related and malicious websites.
• Set multi-factor authentication to prevent networks from falling prey to phishing attacks.

Set up VPN access for remote workers– Business VPNs (virtual private network) is the cornerstone of business continuity plan in the remote working era. Managed IT service providers set up VPNs for individual user to allow all of them a secure pathway of accessing files store on on-site servers. They ensure having all the security best practices in place while setting up a VPN connection.

Managed IT services providers ensure privacy and security by establishing a VPN connection. Some ways by which they achieve this is by:

• Changing users’ IP address as they access public networks or their home networks.
• Encrypting any data transaction.
• Masking your location, IP address, and sensitive data that you access.

Parting Note

While certain services and applications will continue to remain on-premises and will require the support of an in-house IT team, remote support will remain the mantra of an uncertain era. Companies need to go digital and aspire to be digitally innovative. Managed IT services providers can be the ideal guide to help companies achieve digital maturity needed to grapple with the remote work from home concept.

Who are We and Why Does Our Expertise Matter?

getSmartcoders is a leading software development outsourcing company with a decade long experience in designing innovative IT solutions. Our out-of-the-box solutions help clients to be on par with the dynamic technological requirements and sustain and win big in the competitive business landscape. As among the managed IT services frontrunners, we have a team of highly skilled professionals who execute integral IT tasks such as change management, virtualization, operating system maintenance, network maintenance, cross-platform integration, security, among others.