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5 Questions for IT Professionals to Adapt to Today’s Remote Working Environment

We are in unprecedented times, navigating a new reality where business is largely being conducted remotely, outside of a secure office network. As strange as it feels to many, it’s something I’ve been preparing for over 10 years. In 2009, I was part of a team that built the UK Pandemic Flu service designed to provide clinical evaluations for a vaccine in the event of an outbreak. My team worked alongside the UK Chief Medical Officer to better understand how to create a resilient IT service and support function to operate during a pandemic outbreak. Today, it feels surreal that many of those theoretical implications are now coming true.

This expertise, coupled with conversations I’ve had with our customers over the past few weeks, has helped me come up with a few key questions that can keep organizations safe while still providing critical services for the businesses they support.

Here are 5 Questions for IT Professionals to Adapt to Today’s Remote Working Environment:

  1. How many admins do you have? Make sure you have multiple accounts created for different admins – with granular permissions, scope and auditing – to make sure that there is no single point of failure when it comes to managing the system if one of your admins is not available.
  2. Do you have remote access to the management console? While it is not recommended that management consoles are publicly accessible, can you reach it when connected remotely and working from home? Lots of firewalls have different rule sets, ex. LAN<->LAN vs. VPN<->LAN access.
  3. Have you set-up any dashboards or reports? Even if there is a lot of bandwidth available when working remotely, the extra strain being put on ISP’s may affect how practical it is to load up the management console and read all the data that’s in the system. Having a dashboard to provide a quick view on the current status, and maybe any breaches that need attention, helps quickly focus when working from home, but could also be more efficient if bandwidth limitations are in play. Reporting then allows you to monitor the health of your system without ever having to login, reducing bandwidth strain even further.
  4. Are your remote access networks in scope? While solutions like Forescout can automate your security in terms of visibility, device compliance and control via policy, this is limited to what is in scope. If not included now, what is needed to bring your remote access network into scope, even if temporarily, to ensure you don’t end up with additional security concerns when away from the office?
  5. Do you have access to the Forescout Customer Care team? If something does go wrong while working from home, do you have the details you need and access to our support site to speak to our team quickly?

We are here to help our customers navigate these tricky waters. Don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team to answer any questions you may have.

We can also help through our Professional Services consulting not only to think through the questions, but quickly set up for successful outcomes. We are all in this together.

https://www.forescout.com/support/login/

Gary
Twitter: @symesgc

The post 5 Questions for IT Professionals to Adapt to Today’s Remote Working Environment appeared first on Forescout.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Forescout authored by Gary Symes. Read the original post at: https://www.forescout.com/company/blog/5-questions-for-it-professionals-to-adapt-to-todays-remote-working-environment/