We don’t need to hear another statistic about the remote or hybrid workforce. It’s real and it’s here to stay. The channel needs to start talking to customers about mitigating the next ‘disaster’ as much as possible. No matter whether the issue is local, like a network outage, something technical such as a ransomware attack, or another global crisis.
Businesses embraced many disparate systems to facilitate hybrid working in such a short amount of time that it is becoming too challenging to manage them all effectively. It is vital that resellers and MSPs ensure that Enterprise customers have the tools to control, optimise and secure all those platforms as network edges continue to expand.
Prepare for the unexpected
IT teams in both in Enterprise and the channel are being asked to do more with less, so working with customers to develop a robust disaster recovery plan is essential. For example, in a ransomware situation, who needs to be contacted? What applications need to operate no matter what? Who and how can you turn off potentially compromised users or devices?
Running scenarios with customers is great practice by ensuring all outcomes are covered and providing assurance that your team is up to the challenge, building your credibility as their trusted IT protector.
Recently published research shows that unpatched vulnerabilities are directly responsible for up to 60% of all data breaches. It also surfaced that executives anticipate attacks to primarily target weak spots in software configuration, poor maintenance, human error and unknown assets.
Delivering timely patches, updates and establishing best practice in customers’ organisations will save a lot of pain if the worst should happen. Whether an unpreventable event or hack, a robust disaster recovery strategy supported by the right day-to-day habits will mitigate negative outcomes. Impact on PR, brand credibility and loss of revenue for both for end-users and their channel providers can all be reduced or prevented entirely!
Embrace ‘Zero Trust’
Given the number of users across global organisations, it’s no wonder that even the best IT teams struggle to keep up with every device or app that enters the WAN. Now that employees can be working anywhere at any time, enterprises need guarantees that their security processes can immediately embrace new services, devices and access points, all while ensuring the WAN remains properly protected.
The most efficient way to offer this peace of mind is through a broad Zero Trust approach to consistently validate every stage of digital interactions. This ensures agreed-upon security policies are enforced across offices and remote users, while delivering the best-possible application performance and network stability from day one of use.
Keep the momentum
Enterprises don’t want to look back over the last couple of years and worry about which platforms they should have adopted. They want their existing platforms to simply work, rather than see their investments go to waste.
So, instead of pointing the finger at an app that’s not performing as expected and suggesting a substitute that takes customers back to square one, it is wise to first ensure that application performance variations from network to network, country to country, aren’t the underlying cause.
In summary, the antidote for these increasingly complex technology stacks is not more stuff. Rather, convergence is the key to bringing those disparate security services – network monitoring, managed firewalls, secure web gateways, private access, reporting etc. – into a single platform for far simpler management and seamless integration with new services adopted in the future.
That’s how the channel can ensure customers are confident in their digital transformation journeys – and that their data is comprehensively protected. Then they’re free to take full advantage of the newfound flexibility, agility and control they have over their applications, tools and network through a converged SD-WAN and SASE solution, with Zero Trust at its foundation.