Our WFH capability allows for comprehensive duplication of office capabilities: Surendra Singh, Country Manager, Forcepoint

Cybersecurity firm, Forcepoint, has a holistic plan for business continuity, that allows the firm to replicate office like capabilities for all its staff from sales, professional services, technical support, core operations, and product engineering teams, states Surendra Singh, Senior Director & Country Manager at Forcepoint

At Forcepoint, we place the health and safety of the community as a primary concern. Most of our offices are shut as per local government guidelines and employees are working from home in response to current events.

We have enacted our emergency preparedness plan and stand fully engaged to manage through the current threat. As a subset of our Business Continuity Plan (BCP), we have complete remote virtual private network (VPN) capabilities for all critical roles across the organization. Our work from home capability allows for comprehensive duplication of office capabilities. This includes our sales, professional services, technical support, core operations, and product engineering teams. Throughout this unfolding situation, Forcepoint remains committed to our employees, customers and partners for their continued success.

Key lessons learnt

Emergencies happen. That’s why organizations create ‘business continuity’ plans in the first place. In response to current global events, many companies are beginning to implement work from home plans to help keep employees and others around them safe. Situations like the one we’re facing today can require IT organizations to support a surging number of employees working from home.

Beyond technology, this is a time to assess lessons learned from invoking business continuity. As an example, at Forcepoint, we analyzed data gathered during our remote work tests from a couple of weeks ago (we shut offices two consecutive days pre-lockdown to test work-from-home at scale) to assess where we need to put more resources, validate processes and identify gaps early – as a leadership team.

It’s also showing us which areas of the business are experiencing little to no impact. Understanding this data also tells us where we need to revise our business continuity plan or if our plan is working as designed.

Best practices

Use this opportunity to validate and scale work from home assumptions. Make sure your VPN and broader security strategy cover all applications your workforce needs to do their jobs no matter where those applications reside.

Following the below-mentioned tips can go a long way to ensure your organizations’ security without sacrificing employee productivity working remotely:

Rely on your organizations’ emergency preparedness or business continuity plans: Now’s not the time to re-invent the wheel. But, we must leverage this opportunity to validate work from home security and capacity assumptions.

Test your security plans for both access and capacity: Key here is to think through how well your existing security strategy scales to accommodate a large increase in remote workers.

Test your VPN for both security and capacity: A strong VPN strategy is a foundational piece of keeping people and data secure. This is even more true as organizations plan to accommodate large groups of remote workers. Make sure your VPN and broader security strategy covers all applications your workforce needs to do their jobs no matter where those applications reside.