SonicWall Staff

Why Securing Remote Work is Crucial To Ensuring Business Continuity

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If you had asked them in January, most organizations would probably have said things were humming along smoothly. Economic growth was strong, and in most cases budgets and security plans were being created and carried out without any need or intention to disrupt the status quo.

Then the entire world changed.

Within the space of a couple weeks, bustling offices were deserted one by one as federal, state, provincial and local governments issued stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders, and employees boxed up their essential belongings and became part of the rapidly expanding global remote workforce.

While these moves were necessary to stem the spread of COVID-19, the disruption that this sudden change brought with it introduced a set of problems most businesses were ill-equipped to manage.

Companies that previously felt confident in their cybersecurity strategy suddenly found that they didn’t have the capacity or licenses to secure a full-scale mobile workforce. Worse, they needed to manage employees ill-prepared for the transition, many of whom didn’t understand the additional precautions required for safe remote work.

For hackers, though, these are the salad days — and the combination of inexperienced employees and unprepared businesses has brought them out in force. According to Reuters, hacking activity targeting corporations in the U.S. and elsewhere more than doubled in March, and preliminary reports show much the same for April. These threats highlight the urgent need for scalable Secure Remote Access and VPN license capacity to handle the new influx of remote employees while offering the same level of security offered on-prem.

Greater capacity for increased security

To help small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) handle a rapidly expanding remote workforce, SonicWall has improved the scalability of its SMA 210 and 410 appliances — the 210 can now manage up to 200 remote VPN users, and the 410 can now support 400.

Many enterprises, governments and MSSPs are facing issues with scalability, too. To handle the influx of remote users on large distributed networks, the SonicWall SMA 1000 series allows these organizations to scale up to a million remote VPN users.

To scope which SMA solution is right for your organization, review the SonicWall Secure Mobile Access data sheet.

New public cloud options for the ‘new business normal’

The remote-work revolution coincides with another major shift in how enterprises work — the ongoing cloud transformation. The benefits of moving to a public cloud are myriad — including cost savings, greater agility, maximum uptime and quick and easy deployment.

While SonicWall has long supported private clouds, such as VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V, SonicWall SMA 500v and SMA 8200v virtual appliances can now be launched on AWS or Microsoft Azure, allowing businesses to realize these benefits at a time when they may need them the most.

Protect remote workers with special offers on SMA, VPN

Right now, budget concerns are at the forefront for many businesses. To help both new and existing customers implement necessary security during this time of crisis, SonicWall has launched several new ‘Work From Home Securely’ promotions to ensure organizations can implement comprehensive security in a cost-effective way.

With SonicWall’s new Work From Home Securely special offers on SMA and other solutions, there’s never been a better time — or a more crucial time — to secure your remote workforce.

SonicWall Staff