With the coronavirus spreading and business continuity top of mind, we recognize that many companies are actively encouraging their workforce to work from home.
The practical challenge is how to quickly, securely, and flexibly implement an all-encompassing work-from-home (WFH) policy.
While having 25% of your workforce remote is commonplace, few large enterprises are entirely virtual today – and especially not all employees at the same time. So, how do you quickly and securely enable most workers to work from home? Here are some key considerations to ensure your efforts deliver on business continuity, not compromise it.
Get high-assurance, credential-based authentication: Increasingly, anyone who can is being asked to work from home. While people who normally work from home may be security aware, those new to it may not have the best security hygiene. As you know, "home" doesn't always mean "safe." Security that relies on just a password or simple two-factor authentication like a one-time password is woefully inadequate for an insecure facility like a home WiFi network, or worse, a coffee shop. And, we can expect hackers to exploit this temporary WFH surge. It is critical to secure and protect the digital identities of remote workers – making high-assurance, credential-based authentication a must.
Go cloud: Whether an organization is relatively new to a large-scale WFH program or is rapidly expanding, the cloud is a great enabler. There is no way to easily and affordably deploy an on-premises, high-assurance authentication solution in near real-time. Cloud-based authentication gives companies the flexibility to temporarily increase and decrease the percent of WFH users as needed without a step function in cost.
Keep your WFH workforce productive: Even with virtual private network (VPN) access, remote workers are often still somewhat hobbled out of the office. Sometimes they can't access their intranets or can't use apps that require file encryption or document signing. Look for an authentication solution that is integrated to all the major enterprise mobility management vendors such as Microsoft Intune, VMware AirWatch, MobileIron, and Citrix.
If you're looking to quickly and securely enable a remote workforce, Entrust Datacard has got you covered with cloud-based authentication. Get started for free.
