How to Plan Your Cloud Migration Without Downtime
IT Preparedness for COVID-19: Is Your Business Ready?
The first few weeks of 2020 have been dominated by headlines about the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). While the primary focus is rightly on public health and safety, the situation presents a parallel challenge for business leaders and IT departments worldwide: a real-time stress test of their business continuity plans.
As companies consider travel restrictions and employee safety, the critical question arises: If a significant portion of your workforce needed to work from home tomorrow, could they?
This is no longer a theoretical fire drill. It’s a looming operational reality that demands immediate attention. Organizations that have embraced digital transformation, cloud infrastructure, and modern security protocols will find themselves far better prepared. For others, the time to act is now.
The Immediate IT Imperatives
A sudden shift to a large-scale remote workforce puts immense strain on three core areas of IT: infrastructure, collaboration, and security. Proactive preparation must focus on ensuring these pillars are robust enough to handle the load.
1. Secure and Scalable Remote Access Your employees need a way to connect to corporate resources securely.
- VPN Stress Test: Most companies have a VPN, but is it scaled for a fraction of your workforce or the entire company? VPN concentrators and network bandwidth can quickly become bottlenecks. Now is the time to test the maximum capacity of your VPN infrastructure and plan for scaling it, potentially using cloud-based solutions.
- Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): With a distributed workforce, relying on passwords alone is reckless. MFA is an essential layer of security to ensure that the person logging in is who they claim to be. If you haven't enforced MFA across all critical applications, this should be your top priority.
2. Seamless Collaboration Tools Productivity in a remote setting hinges on the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively. Email alone will not suffice.
- Video Conferencing: Can your video conferencing solution (e.g., Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet) handle the entire company using it simultaneously? Ensure you have adequate licenses and that employees are trained on how to use these tools effectively.
- Cloud-Based Document Sharing: Relying on on-premise file shares accessed over a slow VPN will frustrate employees. Cloud-based platforms like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace are designed for this scenario, enabling real-time co-authoring and easy access to documents from anywhere.
3. Endpoint Security for the New Perimeter When employees work from home, the security perimeter of your company is no longer the office firewall; it's every individual laptop and mobile device.
- Device Management: Ensure every company-owned device has up-to-date endpoint protection, encryption, and the ability to be remotely managed or wiped if lost or stolen.
- BYOD Policy: If you have a "Bring Your Own Device" policy, you need clear rules and technical controls to secure company data on personal devices without invading employee privacy.
4. The Cloud Advantage Organizations that have already embarked on their cloud journey have a distinct advantage. As we discussed in our post, "How to Plan Your Cloud Migration Without Downtime," cloud platforms provide the elasticity needed to scale services on demand. Whether it's scaling virtual desktops, collaboration tools, or customer-facing applications, a cloud foundation provides the agility that is critical in a crisis.
Aexyn: Your Partner in Business Resilience
Navigating this uncertainty requires both strategic foresight and rapid technical execution. At Aexyn, we are actively working with our international clients to audit their pandemic preparedness. We help them pressure-test their infrastructure, deploy secure remote access solutions at scale, and implement the collaboration tools needed to keep business running smoothly. Our expertise in cloud engineering and cybersecurity is essential for building a resilient enterprise that can withstand this disruption.