With coronavirus (COVID-19) wreaking havoc across the globe, its disastrous effects are felt in the IT world, too. The lack of a complete work environment, as well as communication issues in development and production, will likely cause a total slowdown in every industry’s growth. Remote work is now mandatory in almost every enterprise.
According to a recent poll conducted by Threatpost, about 52 percent of respondents said that their organization is mostly prepared, but still has groups of employees that present challenges in work-from-home (WFH) situations. Thankfully a wide range of digital tools, ranging from solutions for email collaboration, to making voice and video calls, to even hosting web conferences and virtual seminars, are available in the market. These tools will enable workers to proceed with their regular activities without any major obstacles.
Although there are more than enough adequate applications available to support remote work culture in the long run, it remains to be seen whether this recent bout of remote work will have a negative effect on employee productivity. To aid employees with their WFH tasks, and assist the managers and IT administrators who manage productivity obstacles and resolve security concerns, we offer a suite of endpoint management and security products tailored to organizations’ needs.
Using unified endpoint management solutions like Desktop Central, IT administrators can monitor user logon data by obtaining comprehensive user reports like Logon based reports and Computers with no user logon. They can also meter the usage of various applications in network devices. This data provides the number of hours employees used commercial applications for remote work, enabling IT administrators to determine user efficiency, secure devices, and manage servers and various devices from a central location. Essential applications like antivirus software can be deployed to all remote devices even though they’re outside the corporate network.
End users can also request commercial applications through Desktop Central, and this software will automatically be installed once approved by the IT administrator. This will help accomplish the very important goal of reducing the number of help desk tickets about software installation. After all, every IT administrator’s worst nightmare is waking up to a never-ending queue of tickets. To aid IT administrators further, Desktop Central integrates with a number of help desk solutions. Help desk requests and the actions taken to resolve issues can be viewed in a single console.
Given how difficult it is to deliver corporate devices to employees outside the office, mandated WFH may push enterprises to embrace BYOD policies and allow employees to use mobile devices and other employee-owned endpoints. In other words, employees can work from the comfort of their home using their own smartphones, tablets, and laptops to connect to the organization’s network and access corporate data. To block security threats and monitor mobile devices efficiently, IT administrators can utilize all the features offered in Mobile Device Manager Plus.
Also impacting employee productivity is the time taken by IT administrators to troubleshoot devices. When the help desk is challenged with a flood of requests from multiple channels, addressing an issue can take a long time. This time can be drastically reduced by using a dedicated diagnosing tool. Using an all-in-one troubleshooting solution like Remote Access Plus, IT administrators can take control of an end user’s device remotely. During the remote session, the IT administrator can initiate chat, voice, and video calls, and even record the entire session for review. This reduces device troubleshooting time and optimizes the productivity of all employees.
Security issues and vulnerabilities are other critical factors that might disrupt employee productivity. Configuring firewalls plays a vital role in securing data from hackers. Desktop Central helps administrators easily deploy customized firewall settings from any remote location. As always, prevention is better than cure. To prevent any browser-targeted vulnerabilities, application-based malware, and device-based issues, as well as patch all the devices in your network, try the offerings within our security suite.
We also offer additional security through Global HTTP Proxy configuration. This ensures that all HTTP network traffic is passed only through a proxy server to ensure enhanced data security of all personal and corporate data. Try any of the products in our endpoint management and security suite free for 30 days to see how we can help you remotely manage all accounts.
Remote work can be challenging for people who are not prepared for its aftereffects. With COVID-19 pushing all of us to work remotely, we can create a compelling new digital work environment that is more productive and engaging than what we experienced before.
** Optrics Inc. is a ManageEngine partner
The original article can be found here: