We at HCSS have been utilizing work-from-remote technologies for years, and have encountered many costly mistakes that we want to help you avoid along the way. This post will walk you through our top 5 secrets to working remotely so that your employees can thrive during times of social distancing.

1 – Ensure you have the right IT resources to support your infrastructure –

Any size company should have an Information Technology (IT) expert that you can trust to handle the more complex questions you have about security and vulnerability of your data. Opening up your network to the world is not a simple task, nor is it one that should be taken lightly, but it is absolutely manageable with the right infrastructure team or person in place. If you do not have the IT resources, HCSS has options to fully manage Cloud Hosting with the 24/7 support that you are used to from HeavyBid and HeavyJob.

2 – Get your VPN put in place

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are an absolute security measure when working outside the privacy of your home network. VPNs create an encrypted connection between you and your server that will hide your internet traffic and online activity from the rest of the world. A VPN can offer many benefits from protecting you on public Wi-Fi networks to protecting your sensitive data. We do not recommend running database applications directly over VPNs because of the instability of the data transfer. If your internet transfer is broken, mid-save, you could corrupt the data being sent. The consequence could be as severe as causing your program to become unusable. Absolutely put a VPN in place to secure your connection, but use applications like Remote Desktop or Citrix to deploy your applications once a secure connection is achieved.

3 – Have a Backup Plan in Place

One of the most important survival tools of any business should be to have your data backed up in atleast three ways – on site, disconnected, and off site. Ensure that your backups are good, current, and create a plan to put your data back in place if your network should become compromised or your hard drives experience failure. If you want to take it a step further, you should practice replacing your server, and experience how much time it would take to get your server back online in case of breach or failure. Having a backup on site will help you in case you need to recover from a mistake. Having a backup that is not directly connected to your server will help you in times of ransomware. Having a backup off-site will benefit you if the server room becomes uninhabitable. While thumb drives are not ideal, they provide an immediate solution for backing up your important information.

4 – Update, Upgrade, or Replace

Make sure that you have the right infrastructure in place to handle the flow of traffic. Anything involving data flow will only be as fast as your weakest link. In this case, it could be your internet speed, your hard drive transfer rate, or the capability of your server to handle the multiple users. It could be as simple as the cable that runs from your computer to your network hub. Evaluate any recent issues that you have encountered with speed or performance, and find out if you need to consider upgrading or replacing your infrastructure. If you are not comfortable with a local (on premises) server, the alternative to consider would be public Cloud Service providers like Microsoft, AWS, or Google.

5 – Anti-virus and Anti-malware

If you are using your personal computer, ensure you have the appropriate anti-virus and anti-malware protection in place. Backup your data as frequently as needed – On external USB drives or Cloud based backup solutions such as Box.net, Google Drive or OneDrive.

If you have any questions – we have a support department that is always ready to assist you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and in 3 rings or less.