In the past week, we’ve had several customers request rapid, low-cost and secure remote working solutions for their office-based employees without a long-term commitment.
- Low cost - Rapid to deploy - Easy to scale-up & scale down
In challenging times, customers are looking for guidance on how to rapidly enable remote working without significant long-term costs or commitments. So we thought we’d share our advice and recommendations.
Firstly, for any business, having to 'react' is unwelcome. Unplanned, hasty investments could lead to poor decisions, impacting short- and long-term business. With an immediate, short-term need, there were some very clear requirements:
With these customers' many users, their respective IT infrastructures were not built for large-scale remote work.
While you may expect to have 5-10% of your workforce connected over VPN at any one time, few networks were built to serve more than 50%, potentially grinding the network to a halt for everyone. As well as being costly and time-consuming, increasing bandwidth, connecting over VPN from unsecured home computers/devices would provide a big security risk, without implementing and enforcing additional security controls.
So, we knew VPN wouldn’t fit many of the customers’ requirements.
VPN solutions would take too long to enable, with insufficient bandwidth and a significant security risk.
Challenge: How do you rapidly enable your workforce to securely connect to your corporate environment, using their own devices? All of this whilst ensuring no data leakage and a great experience for your end users?
Solution: Virtual Desktops in the Cloud. Deployed on Azure, CyberOne provided a solution that scaled dynamically based on the number of users requiring access. Using a blend of Microsoft 365 and Azure, CyberOne provided virtual desktops that would run on ANY device, even with a slow (64 kb/s) internet connection. Moreover, we utilised RemoteFX (remote delivery of Windows virtual desktops over LAN), providing a seamless user experience, making it feel like the application or remote desktop is running natively on their local device.
Security: A VDI solution provides a secure desktop environment protected from malware threats and local device security issues.
Costs: As the solution scales dynamically, based on the number of users logged in, the client would only pay for what they use. As demand increases, more virtual desktops are spun up to accommodate the load. Similarly, when demand tails off, they would not be left with a large unused overhead.
The per-user cost is around £25 a month, as a fully managed 'Pay as you go' service (including licensing, cloud, support and secure web filtering, including sandboxing). A typical onboarding takes around 10 engineering days.
CyberOne has continued to excel by building trusted partnerships and supporting clients’ long-term best interests. In light of the significant challenges facing many businesses, we trust you find this guidance useful. Operating 24/7, our dedicated team of experts is always on hand to answer any questions you may have. If you have any questions, please get in touch with us.
CyberOne is a government-approved Cyber Security and IT Managed Service Provider, supporting clients 24/7 from our ISO27001-accredited UK Security and network Operations Centre.