It is likely that the Covid pandemic has got you looking into your business continuity plans and whilst doing so, we would urge you to consider the needs of your different groups of workers. All too often all users are put into the same category, but we at FluidOne have seen great benefits for users and businesses if they are broken down into specific categories based on the work that they do. The main categories are the Knowledge Worker, the Always Connected Worker and the High Security Worker.
Users from the same department can fall into different groups, often based on seniority, the applications they use, the data they use and the specific tasks that they perform. Regardless of which category a user falls into, the limiting factor to productivity is often the speed or stability of their internet connection. At the heart of supporting all user types securely in your environment is connecting to a Next Generation UTM (unified threat management) Firewall in the core network. Within this device you must have a VPN Concentrator, at FluidOne we us Fortinet in the core and the concentrator is standard as a part of the FortiOS Operating system.
The most common user scenario is what we call the Knowledge Worker. This will apply to most people within your company. Typically, these users need access to email, data and applications in order work effectively whilst working from home. Often, these users are working offline on documents and as such they are not always accessing the internet. These users can connect via a home internet connection, but this means that corporate data must travel across unsafe networks. This type of worker needs a VPN (Virtual Private Network) tunnel across the internet in order to create a secure connection to the firewall back at the office. To make sure that all of these connections are coming in from legitimate employees, we recommend that companies use a two-factor authentication to add additional security beyond the standard Username and Password, as those can easily be stolen or hacked.
The Always Connected Worker, however, will need constant connectivity and will probably be working on multiple devices. The availability of online apps is crucial to this worker, this would include roles in IT, those using voice and video all day such as contact centre workers, those in telemarketing, VDI users, anyone that can't work offline for any period of time. This user is likely to have elevated responsibilities and might want a dedicated connection, or a managed wireless access point deployed to their home. It is possible to configure wireless access points to get all of the security policies that the office provides. The wireless networks can even be configured to be the same as in the office, making it simple and secure to connect all corporate devices, just like in the office.
The High Security Worker would be an employee with access to the most sensitive company information, or customer information such as credit card data or regulated market information. For this user, you might want to consider deploying a small UTM firewall in their home, or providing a dedicated secure connection linked directly into the corporate network. This effectively creates a small branch office for this user, giving them all the access they would expect while in the office. All equipment can be deployed with our zero-touch provisioning, meaning that the equipment is mailed to the user to plug in and then all their configurations are pushed to them.
As organisations look to support more home working in the future it’s important to consider that home internet connections are being used by more devices, and for more services throughout the day. Add to this the fact that the contention rations of consumer products means that services suffer higher levels of degradation at peak times, the ability to guarantee performance has never been more important or more difficult.
About the author
Russell Horton, CEO at FluidOne
Russell is married with 4 children, has a blackbelt in Karate and is a long-time supporter of the England Rugby team. At weekends he likes to spend time with his family playing football, doing indoor climbing and karate.