Expanding your remote workforce may have a major effect on network infrastructure, security/compliance, and corporate processes. Progent has 20 years of background assisting SMBs to design, deploy, manage, optimize, and debug IT environments that incorporate work-from-home employees. Progent can help your Des Moines company to pick the right tools and follow leading practices in building and operating a safe virtual ecosystem for teleworkers that promotes teamwork and returns maximum business value. Progent can provide services ranging from on demand guidance for helping you over challenging IT roadblocks to full project management to help you carry out business-critical tasks.
Progent can help Des Moines, Iowa organizations to with any aspect of building a high-functioning work-from-home environment by providing infrastructure design and configuration services, IP voice expertise, voice/video conferencing integration, collaboration platform selection and deployment, public cloud integration, helpdesk services, data security, data protection solutions, and unified management.
Network Infrastructure for a Remote Workforce
Configuring the network infrastructure required to support a remote work environment can be especially challenging if you have to manage a mix of personal hardware such as desktop computers and notebooks, routers, and Wi-Fi APs from an assortment of vendors and with a mix of OS software and firmware releases. Progent's experience delivering online help for both outdated and modern IT products in remote office solutions enables you to make efficient use of your existing infrastructure and provides you with fast access to expertise for making essential upgrades. Services available from Progent to assist your company to implement a productive telecommuting infrastructure include:
IP Voice Solutions for Teleworkers
Expanding the corporate phone environment to include remote users is vital to maintaining a productive work-at-home solution. A broad range of cloud-based digital PBX platforms are popular with small and mid-size businesses to support telecommuters. Many enterprises depend on Cisco's modern or older products for VoIP solutions. Progent can help organizations of all sizes to plan or maintain a remote VoIP environment that provides the versatility, convenience and security needed for teleworkers. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE IP Voice consultants can provide advanced support to assist businesses optimize their existing Cisco IP voice environments to handle an expanding at-home workforce.
Voice/Video Conferencing for an At-Home Workforce
A broad range of voice/video conferencing platforms from leading technology companies enable virtual meetings, video conferencing, chat, and screen sharing for both onsite workers and at-home workers. Many companies use a mix of products to accommodate their various partners and clients. Progent can help your organization to maintain your existing voice/video conferencing environment and optimize the experience of your remote employees.
Microsoft Integrated Collaboration Software for Telecommuters
Microsoft's collaboration platforms are tightly integrated with Microsoft's popular Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 families, offering a powerful environment of applications that deliver a consistent user interface for exchanging information across multiple sites and on a broad range of endpoint devices. Progent has delivered online consulting services for Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange Server since their initial releases and can assist businesses to configure these flagship collaboration platforms to maximize the productivity of your remote workers.
SharePoint utilizes web sites to allow collaboration and knowledge sharing by providing policy-driven delivery of data, business processes, and tools for looking through enterprise-wide information silos. SharePoint permits you to build secure web portals that enables remote workforce to view and update consolidated corporate intelligence via Intranets (Wikis), Blogs, social networking web sites, and Web Parts. To find out about Progent's SharePoint support services, see SharePoint integration and development expertise.
Exchange and Exchange Online offer secure collaboration features including public folders, shared mailboxes, and shared calendars and contacts. Progent's Microsoft certified Exchange experts can show you how to activate and utilize these features for your at-home workers. To learn about Progent's Exchange consulting expertise, refer to integration consulting for Exchange Server.
OneDrive is Microsoft's collaborative cloud-based file hosting and synchronization service, comparable to GoogleDrive. Remote workers can save files to OneDrive, and co-workers can retrieve them safely via a web browser. Included with Office and Microsoft 365, OneDrive allows home workers to co-edit documents. Revisions created offline are automatically uploaded when you go back online. To learn about Progent's expertise for OneDrive, go to Microsoft Onedrive integration experts.
Public Cloud Integration Services for At-Home Workers
Progent offers affordable online assistance for enabling businesses to create, maintain and repair integrated network architectures that incorporate physical data centers, telecommuters, branch offices, and public cloud resources. Progent offers top-tier consultant for all modes of cloud service delivery including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Progent can help telecommuters fix problems with public cloud access, authentication, and cybersecurity.
Microsoft Azure is a leading family of cloud software and services that allows you to use infrastructure, virtual servers, and critical apps hosted on Microsoft's massive cloud. Azure features over 100 cloud-based services including hosting for Windows and Linux-powered virtual machines, scalable cloud storage, messaging, application development with Visual Studio, and backup/restore. Progent can assist your organization to set up VMs on Azure Virtual Machines, integrate cloud-based storage on Azure Storage services, unify identity management with Azure Active Directory, and design data backup and restore systems with Azure Backup. Progent can also help you establish protected connections to Azure services for at-home workers by setting up and troubleshooting firewall appliances and VPN IPsec tunnels. For details about Progent's consulting services for Azure, refer to Microsoft Azure consulting services.
Microsoft 365, formerly called Office 365, is Microsoft's popular family of business productivity software and cloud-based services available by subscription. Microsoft apps and services are marketed in a variety of bundles intended for customers ranging from individuals and households to large corporations. Progent can provide quick and affordable remote access to consultants familiar with Microsoft 365-compatible clients running Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android operating systems. Progent's experts can help you to evaluate the various subscription plans offered with Microsoft 365 and deploy 365 apps for your remote workers in a way that delivers maximum business value. For information about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft 365, visit Microsoft 365 integration support.
Microsoft 365 Exchange Online is one of the most widely used cloud-based applications in the Microsoft 365 product suite. Exchange Online offers the benefits of lower costs for data center infrastructure, simplified management, on-demand scaling, high reliability, and additional benefits inherent with public clouds. Microsoft has designed Microsoft 365 Exchange Online to operate seamlessly with on-premises Exchange environments, allowing customers to create hybrid cloud/onsite information systems. Progent's certified Exchange consultants can provide occasional assistance to get you past challenging technical bottlenecks and also offer comprehensive project management services to ensure your telecommuters have convenient and safe access to your Exchange Online deployment. For details Progent's support services for Microsoft 365 Exchange Online, see Microsoft 365 Exchange Online integration and support expertise.
Amazon AWS is a trailblazer in the public cloud arena and is the industry's top provider of cloud services. Progent offers quick and affordable online contact with cloud integration experts who can assist your organization to plan, implement, maintain, and debug hybrid information networks that integrate Amazon AWS cloud-based services with on-premises resources and with other popular cloud platforms like Azure. Progent also offers access to Cisco-certified CCIE networking consultants to help you to build a high-uptime network architecture to make sure your employees have a productive computing environment regardless of whether they are working from your headquarters, a branch office, from home, or on the road. For details about Progent's expertise for Amazon AWS, go to Amazon AWS consulting expertise.
Google Cloud (GCP) is a popular set of public cloud services that provides Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products. Progent's certified Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco consulting experts can help your business to scale your current IT resources with the Google Cloud Platform, and Progent's DBA experts can show you how to make your mission-critical applications cloud ready so your at-home workers can benefit fully from Google Cloud Platform services. Progent's consultants can assist your organization to set up VMs on GCP Compute Engine, design a cost-effective storage solution with GCP Storage services, and streamline identity management for remote workers with GCP Cloud Identity services. Progent's experts can also assist your business to utilize GCP's management technology to administer and monitor your GCP environment. To learn, visit Google Cloud Platform (GCP) consulting support.
Help Desk Services for At-Home Workers
A sudden, enterprise-wide changeover to a teleworker workforce, which might be motivated by a pandemic or as an element of a business continuity preparedness plan, can overstretch even a well-staffed in-house Help Desk. Progent's Call Center services make it possible for organizations of any size to outsource or augment their Help Desk with Progent's online Technical Response Center (TRC) team.
Security for Teleworkers
Work-from-Home staff members typically use their personal computers and often operate in a poorly secured physical area. This situation increases their vulnerability to cyber attacks and requires judicious configuration of firewalls, anti-malware tools, multi-factor authentication, remote endpoint monitoring, thorough user education, and the development of policies built on best practices. Progent's veteran roster of IT security solutions consultants can help your business to design, deploy and manage a compliant cybersecurity solution that guards critical IT assets in networks that incorporate remote workers.
Firewalls allow companies to build a network environment that can be securely utilized by local users and by an at-home workforce, mobile users, vendors, clients, and the public. Modern firewall appliances allow you to configure and manage different access rights to different classes of users and to expand your IT network and adjust your security as your company evolves and as cyber threats become more complex. Progent supports both current and legacy security devices from all major vendors like Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, WatchGuard, Juniper, SonicWall and Fortinet. For details about Progent's firewall support services, refer to firewall support expertise.
Remote Endpoint Security Monitoring makes it easy to track the disparate devices used by teleworkers and either block or spot and mitigate the latest threats such as ransomware. With Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring services, a lightweight software agent is put on every secured endpoint device, monitoring all activity and using advanced machine learning and full execution context from SentinelOne to detect zero-day threats at inception. When an attack is discovered, ProSight Active Security Monitoring immediately isolates the infected endpoint device from the network to contain the threat. Since the ProSight ASM agent is autonomous, endpoints remain protected even if they are not connected to the Internet. To learn more about ProSight ASM, refer to remote endpoint monitoring for at-home workers.
Progent's Duo authentication managed services utilize Cisco's Duo cloud technology to protect against compromised passwords through the use of two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo supports single-tap identity confirmation with Apple iOS, Google Android, and other personal devices. With 2FA, when you log into a secured application and enter your password you are asked to verify your identity via a unit that only you possess and that is accessed using a separate network channel. A wide selection of devices can be used for this second means of ID validation including a smartphone or wearable, a hardware token, a landline phone, etc. You can register multiple validation devices. To learn more about ProSight Duo identity validation services, see Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services for at-home workers.
Security Audits can evaluate the vulnerability of your information system to all classes of outside and internal security threats for a network that incorporates an at-home workforce. Progent can run remote, automated security inventory software for quickly and affordably uncovering a wide variety of security weaknesses that can be surfaced via the Internet. Progent's security assessment experts, which can be provided by data security experts with top certifications including CISM, CISSP, and GIAC, can help you to evaluate your operations and governance policies and review your WAN architecture to enable you to implement top-level security for your telecommuters.
Download White Paper: Securing a Work-From-Home (WFH) Environment
To read or download a white paper describing key things to focus on for protecting a network that supports work-from-home staff, click:
Protecting a Work-From-Home Network White Paper. (PDF - 2.4 MB)
Data Protection for Teleworkers
The field of Data Protection covers saving and recovering critical data in order to avoid data loss and reduce restoration time and effort in the event of storage system problems resulting from equipment breakdowns, programming hiccups, human error, cyber attack, or other causes. Dependable data protection strategies can be especially difficult to design and manage in hybrid environments that incorporate in-house data centers, cloud resources, and an at-home workforce.
Unified Management for Teleworkers
Microsoft has renamed and rebundled its endpoint management products under the name Microsoft Endpoint Manager, which encompasses Intune for cloud-based management of remote devices and Configuration Manager for managing local computers. Microsoft Endpoint Manager features a unified solution for safeguarding critical information by controlling on-premises, mobile, and home-based endpoint devices.
Intune
Intune is a component of Microsoft's Endpoint Management suite that also features Microsoft Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud service for managing and protecting remote devices and applications. Remote endpoint computers can be personally owned or company owned. Network administrators managing the endpoint devices of at-home workers can use Intune to provision and validate apps on devices, push updates and certificates, set up rules for permission to access information and networks, manage passwords, create VPN tunnels, control how teleworkers share data, set up threat protection, verify compliance, and wipe corporate data from missing, stolen or decommissioned endpoint devices. Microsoft Intune works with iOS/iPadOS, Google Android, Windows, and macOS computers. To find out about Microsoft Intune and to find out how Progent can help your company to use Microsoft's Endpoint Management to administer the endpoint devices of your at-home workers, go to Intune remote device management experts.
VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is a feature-rich unified Mobile Device Management (MDM) product that helps network administrators to keep remote endpoint devices up to date and protected. Workspace ONE incorporates VMware AirWatch technology for centralized endpoint management along with VMware's Horizon virtual software delivery technology for access control, application management, and configuration management of endpoints. Workspace ONE operates with endpoints powered by Windows 10, macOS, Apple iOS, Android, Chrome OS, or popular distributions of Linux. VMware Workspace ONE is offered by subscription as a cloud service or as an on-premises deployment through a one-time purchase. Top capabilities of Workspace ONE include fast over-the-air provisioning of new notebooks, immediate onboarding of new employees, policy setting and enforcement for all categories of endpoints, aggregated reporting and analytics, email encryption, and integration with Microsoft apps and cloud products. To learn about Progent's support for VMware Workspace ONE, visit VMware Workspace ONE mobile device management consultants.
Contact Progent for Telecommuter Expertise
To contact Progent about building and maintaining an efficient telecommuter solution for your Des Moines, Iowa organization, phone