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Coronovirus (COVID-19): Your Technology Readiness Checklist

The worldwide spread of the coronavirus has resulted in an increased focus on the ability to “mobilize” remote workplace connectivity. Companies such as IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon have announced work from home policies in addition to travel restrictions. While working from home may initially seem a simple policy to enact there are a number of items that need to be taken into account in order to maintain the productivity and security of your company:

#1 Assess Your VPN’s Performance

Network security is critical, more so in the event an entire organization was to work remotely. Should you find yourself considering providing VPN access to your entire staff, you must first ensure that your company’s network can handle the increased VPN traffic. Conducting a test of the VPN’s performance will identify whether the current Internet Server Provider (ISP) connection and firewall are up to task. This does not indicate a fault in your current network setup so much as the need to adapt. Simply put, the entire company is much more than what would normally be a subset. As such it is critical to have your ISP bandwidth and firewall tested in order to ensure that you can provide your employees with the VPN performance needed to ensure business continuity.

If you would like Sagin, LLC. to assess your network’s current VPN performance status please contact us at info@saginllc.com.

#2 Get In Line Now: Hardware Purchases

If you’ve attempted to buy any hardware such as computers in the last few weeks, you would already be aware that most technology equipment manufacturers are facing a significant backlog of orders. Reliance on the workforce in China is very high for these items, and factories have been on shutdown while the country responded to the growth of the virus. Currently the workforce has started to return, but the “scare” is now growing worldwide. Now is the time to place pending or near-term hardware purchases so you are essentially in line to receive them without substantial delay when you may need them.

#3 Enable a Mobile Workforce

In the event of a “declared threat”, organizations are already prepping for or asking questions of how employees can work from home. Luckily these days most productivity and collaboration tools are cloud-based and can be easily accessed from home. The only issue is, we commonly find that these are only partially implemented. For example, if using Microsoft 365, email may be hosted while documents/data are still running locally on a file server. Or video/chat features aren’t in use. If you’re in this type of setting, then immediate action needs to be taken to leverage available cloud-based resources to ensure your workforce can continue operating while at home.

If you would like us to review your company’s ability to leverage collaboration technologies, please reach out to us at info@saginllc.com

#4 Emergency Decision Protocol and Business Continuity

It is an unfortunate truth that many companies hesitate to draft disaster recovery and business continuity plans. It is a time-consuming burden that is often deprioritized. However, a well-documented plan also includes decision and communication protocol should there be a need to immediately mobilize for any type of event. With the coronavirus threat, it’s best to act now to document what your organizations decision factors will be and how communications will take place should there need to be an emergency decision made.

If you would like us to review, or provide assistance in the development of a business continuity plan, please reach out to us at info@saginllc.com

SAGIN, LLC is a professional services firm which combines, IT Managed Services, Consulting, Risk Management and Employee Development to keep businesses operating even through the difficult times. To learn more about us or perform an assessment of your IT operations you can contact us at info@saginllc.com or +1.312.281.0290 or visit us at www.saginllc.com  

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