COVID-19 Remote Infrastructure
A Structural Engineering Consulting firm with 100+ employees, based primarily in Pune and Mumbai with projects across India and in Muscat required infrastructure for remote working capability during the COVID-19 lockdown in India.
The client required a solution to enable their employees to work remotely while also ensuring information security. Employees also needed to be taught how to use the remote working system and have the relevant work-related licenses installed on their systems.
We carried out an audit of the company to understand the current scenario and what would be required and found the following challenges:
- Remote access to File Server and Business Critical Data available in DC at Office Premise;
- Use of Network license of Design Software over the VPN connectivity;
- Slow performance while working through a VPN;
- User Awareness and Readiness concerning the Work from Home Scenario;
- Ensuring Data and Information Security in Work from Scenario;
- Providing Better Security Controls to avoid any Security;
- Incidents while working from home.
Solutions
Our team came up with the following solutions to the challenges highlighted by the audit:
- VPN Policy Definition and Implementation: Designing a VPN Access policy to ensure that all required resources are available to designated users and implementing the same;
- Out of Office Profile Definition and Implementation: Designing an Out of Office profile comprising of Web filter, Application Filter and Device control to ensure secured and controlled environment while the Organisations devices and Information is being accessed out of Office premise and implementing the same to all end-user devices in record time;
- Optimised Design Software Licenses: Ensuring proper mapping of available licenses with the designated users and completing the technical implementation of the same which resulted in optimised use of available licenses and productivity;
- Security Monitoring and Reporting: Implementing additional Security Monitoring and reporting considering the rising Threat levels in Covid-19 Pandemic;
- Redesigning Backup Schedules: Redesigning the backup schedules and Retention Policies considering an increased threat level to ensure backup data availability in case the need arises for restoration;
- User Awareness/ Readiness for Remote Working: Creating documents and Mailers consisting of Operational and Security guidelines for helping users cope-up with the changing trends of Remote Working;
- Remote End User and Server Support: Delivering end-user and Server Support remotely with agreed service levels respect to response, resolution Time and Infrastructure Uptime.
As a result of the new infrastructure that we implemented, we ensured that the client maintained high levels of productivity during the lockdown in India. We set up a secure environment that provided proper information security and controls required for remote working, which helped in avoiding any security incidents for the customer.
