Q&A
EDITOR’S
As organisations suddenly find
themselves responding to a massive
increase in remote workers,
immediate attention has necessarily been
focused on maintaining and enhancing
VPN infrastructure. But transitioning
administrative staff, technical support
teams, HR, marketing departments
and other employees, who traditionally
work from a physical office to alternate
work sites creates significant security
challenge for organisations. To address
this concern, organisations must deploy
a Business Continuity strategy that can
ALAIN PENEL, REGIONAL VP, FORTINET
support a remote workforce with little or
no notice, without compromising network
security. Business Continuity also means
that organisations should be capable of
maintaining normal levels of productivity,
relying on solutions easily deployable
and configurable, ideally with zero touch
provisioning, to enable a quick transition to
a remote workforce while maintaining full
security visibility and control regardless of
their deployment environment.
The first step is to ensure that remote
workers have the ability to connect securely
to the enterprise network, accessing emails,
Internet, teleconferencing, limited file
sharing, but traffic between the teleworker
and the enterprise network could be
intercepted and potentially modified by an
eavesdropper. As a result, organisations must
make sure teleworkers can connect to their
organisations remotely with virtual private
network (VPN) software. This software,
which is likely already included on the
employee’s endpoint computer, will enable
snoop-resistant connectivity to remote
Organisations must
deploy a Business
Continuity strategy
that can support a
remote workforce
with little or no notice,
without compromising
network security.
company applications and data, ensuring
maximum protection of assets. Another
major requirement is employing multi-factor
authentication (MFA) which is critical to
protecting data. MFA could come in the form
of combining something the remote user
possesses – like a ‘token’ on a cell phone –
with something this person knows – like a
password. This strategy will provide an extra
level of security that ensures the user is the
authorised employee he or she claims to be.
When employees are working on-site,
securing their connections to cloud-based
resources using on-site security appliances is
logical since traffic already passes through the
network perimeter. However, remote workers
are connecting from outside the network with
traffic bound for the cloud. The addition of
cybersecurity solutions, such as the ability
to support secure SSL connections from
any browser to the cloud, enable users to
securely access these applications and related
data stored in the cloud without increasing
complexity for the users or the security
operations team. Leveraging tunneling
capabilities available in SSL VPN can help
organisations seamlessly extend security
out to a large remote workforce connectivity
solution while also using common network
security practices that are likely in place in
organisations with large user offices.
As we navigate through largely uncharted
waters during these unprecedented times, it
is critical that organisations do their part in
securing customer data, employee operations
and Business Continuity as best as possible.
By leveraging security tools and resources,
such as those offered through Fortinet,
business leaders can establish best practices
and get the support they need to protect their
organisations during these times of rapidly
evolving workplace operations.
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