IT Considerations During COVID-19: From End User Support to Security

As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to spread across the globe, businesses everywhere are closing their doors and resorting to remote working for the sake of their employees’ health. This has resulted in a spike in the demand for remote support tools and services, as organizations want to ensure business continuity while doing their part to end the virus spread. Things like security and end user support are among the most important factors when transitioning from workdays at the office to working from an at-home workstation. Some key IT considerations are outlined below to help guide you in the shift to remote work.

The Purpose of Remote Support Solutions

Regardless of your industry, remote work should be three things: easy to use, secure, and reliable. Organizations need remote support solutions that can take care of the following tasks while keeping connections secure and improving the end user experience:

• Helping users within and outside of the traditional network perimeter.
• Remotely accessing unattended servers and workstations.
• Maintaining network devices (this include routers, switches, etc.).
• Supporting a wide array of mobile devices (Android and iOS).
• Supporting multiple platforms (such as Windows, Mac, and other systems).
• Facilitating remote access for vendors.

Making sure that the IT solution you pick can handle the above jobs is critical to promote a healthy network and a happy staff.

Broad Platform Support

Today’s remote support solutions should aim to give support representatives the ability to provide their services regardless of the end user’s platform. Support technicians need to be able to provide support via their mobile device as well.

Picking the right coding language can make all the difference when ensuring that you can support a broad range of platforms. For instance, when an IT services provider needs to quickly connect through a modern web browser like Google Chrome, it makes the most sense to use an HTML5-based console.

The most important notion to keep in mind is that the broader the platform compatibility, the better you will be able to provide ongoing support to your end users without having to switch between multiple tools. You can then standardize support using that single tool, which improves incident handling time and provider productivity. Some of the major platforms that should be considered for support include Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and Chrome OS.

Security & Compliance

Unfortunately, security concerns are growing alongside remote work. This occurs because there are more access points for hackers to tap into. Managed service providers typically are required to use admin credentials with elevated privileges to resolve any IT problems. While cyberattacks are often aimed at privileged account credentials, simply following credential management best practices can help to prevent breaches. However, MSPs sometimes sacrifice those best practices in favor of attempting to quickly resolve issues. It is critical to provide technicians with the credentials and authentication they need to quickly fix any IT problems, but it is even more imperative that you do so in a secure manner.

Today’s plethora of threats makes it increasingly important that firms be able to identify the who, what, where, and when as they relate to remote access activities. This becomes especially significant when you are subject to regulations such as HIPAA for the healthcare industry, where the privacy measures are extra stringent. The right remote security solution will produce detailed reports that prove compliance with any regulation requirements.

Remote End User Support

It is vital that you seek out a solution that offers deployment and licensing options that best fit the needs of your business. Common options include cloud subscriptions along with and physical and virtual appliances. Cloud support is one of the more popular choices, as it is usually more flexible and scalable than its other storage counterparts. Regardless of what you choose, it is crucial that you verify that the remote support solution you pick includes all of the features and capabilities that you may want or need.

In addition, remote end user support should help end users to seamlessly transition into working from home through on-demand user support, new user provisioning, smartphone and tablet management, patching, desktop security, and more. Using IT end user support services can save your company time, money, and stress in the long run.

With most United States businesses suddenly encouraging their employees to work from home, employers can become overwhelmed by a lack of preparation for remote working. Enlisting the help of a trusted third-party managed IT services provider like Contigo can make all the difference in instances such as this. Let us take over your IT issues so that you can focus on your business’ core offerings during this chaotic time. Contact us today to show everyone that your firm is unstoppable – even in the face of a global pandemic.