617.938.6200
by Larry Veino, Chief Technology Officer
March 18, 2020 – The Coronavirus continues to cause businesses here in the Boston area (and beyond) to dramatically alter the way in which they conduct operations. Everyone’s first priority is obviously ensuring the safety of their family, friends, and community. At Focus, we recently implemented a work from home policy to enable our people to do just that.
In addition, we’re following one of our corporate values which encourages us to actively serve our community. Focus is sending “lunch money” to every employee this week to spend on delivery of food from their local restaurants. The dining industry like so many others is taking a huge hit during this crisis, and every little bit helps these businesses stay afloat. Many food delivery services have waived delivery fees, and offer no contact drop off to help ensure safety. Also, remember to check in on your neighbors, especially any with disabilities, and the elderly. In times like these, we all need to come together for the common good.
On the business front, as a Managed Services Provider, we see it all. We have witnessed customers send folks home without any planning or warning, users unplugging desktop computers from work and bringing them home assuming they will function, folks using unprotected home equipment for work purposes, VPN connections and bandwidth being overrun. It is all happening quickly and in real time.
What can you do to ensure business continuity?
Don’t wait to put together a remote worker policy, and to ensure you can actually implement and support it. Things will get worse before they get better. As we continue navigating this unique situation together, here’s a few links from leading manufacturers offering free access to their products, as well as some best practices around enabling a secure remote workforce. If you don’t already have the products in place to do that, now is a good time to leverage these free offers.
Of course, if you need any assistance in enabling your secure remote workforce, or with any of the below offers, please contact us contact your Focus account manager or vCIO, call our Helpdesk 877-303-0480 or email support@focustsi.com.
Dell-EMC
RSA – MFA
Get Rsa Securid Access for Free to Help in This Time of Uncertainty
VMware
Cisco Umbrella, DUO, and AnyConnect
Cisco Expands Free Security Offerings To Help With Rise In Remote Workers
Cisco WebEx Free
Cisco Webex Available Free in These Countries COVID 19 Response
Microsoft Teams