Secure remote access ensures your business keeps productive in a disruptive, dynamic world
Abstract
Globally, the mobile workforce is here to stay – and on the rise. The benefits in agility, business IT continuity and productivity make secure mobile cloud based access strategically imperative for today’s business. However, to effectively support this workforce, IT is faced with several challenges, including an explosion of endpoints, smarter threats and the need to access both internal and SaaS resources access, all while operating secure remote access on a lean budget.
Introduction
Each day’s headlines can bring disruptive challenges that require dynamic technology solutions. Public health emergencies, natural events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and blizzards, and political crises can all restrict mission-critical staff from travel or accessing resources at a physical site. To ensure revenue continuity, companies must have the agility to conduct business from anywhere, at any time.
At the same time, many companies seek to benefits from increasing staff productivity and retention, as well as minimizing operational overhead costs of maintaining physical office facilities, by empowering personnel to work from anywhere, at any time.
According to a global 2019 IWG survey of over 15,000 professionals from a range of different industries in 80 countries:
- 85% confirmed increased productivity due to greater flexibility
- 65% say flex work helped reduce CAPEX/OPEX and manage risk
- 75% consider flex work to be the new normal
- 62% of companies worldwide currently have flex work policies
- Over half of employees worldwide work remotely more than 2.5 days a week
- Over 80% of workers would choose a flex-work job over a non-flex job
- The U.S. economy alone could see a $4.5 trillion boost through flex work
As a result, companies have increasingly relied upon mobile access to resources from both authorized and BYOD devices outside of their traditional network perimeters. See our post on the importance of cloud infrastructure for digital transformation.
Effective cybersecurity must include secure remote access
Providing remote access in today’s anywhere/anytime, hyper-distributed world opens an explosion of exposure points over a myriad of potentially insecure mobile endpoint devices.
Human fallibility and risky online behaviour mandate that employees cannot be trusted to ensure the security of their own mobile devices.
Moreover, the array of threat types is expanding, deepening and getting smarter, including targeted ransomware, never-before-seen threats, memory-based malware, side-channel attacks and encrypted threats.
Ultimately, the security of your remote network must match that of your wired network. This requires a zero-trust posture regarding any mobile device attempting to connect with corporate resources, whether those resources be on-prem or in the cloud. Secure remote access is a core component of a zero-trust approach to anywhere, anytime access.
SonicWall’s SSL VPN features provide secure remote access to on-premise and cloud environments using the NetExtender client.
NetExtender is an SSL VPN client for Windows or Linux users that is downloaded
transparently and that allows you to run any application securely on the company’s network.
It uses Point-to-point Protocol (PPP). SSL VPN is subject to licencing, for more information contact sales@nostra.ie
Conclusion
SonicWALL SSL VPN client provides an extra layer of security to remote workers. However, there are many layers you may need to consider depending on your business environment. Please contact one of our corporate cybersecurity and compliance experts for further information or an audit.
