Enlarging your at-home workforce can have a major impact on network architecture, cybersecurity, and corporate workflows. Progent has two decades of experience assisting businesses of all sizes to plan, configure, manage, optimize, and debug IT networks that incorporate a remote workforce. Progent can help your Baton Rouge organization to select the appropriate technologies and follow leading practices in creating and operating a safe virtual solution for teleworkers that promotes teamwork and delivers top value. Progent can provide services ranging from as-needed expertise for helping you over occasional IT bottlenecks to full project management or co-management to help you carry out business-critical initiatives.
Progent's consultants can assist Baton Rouge, Louisiana companies to with any facet of building a high-performing remote work ecosystem by providing infrastructure design and configuration services, IP voice expertise, voice/video conferencing support, collaboration platform selection and deployment, cloud connectivity, Call Desk outsourcing, security monitoring, backup/restore solutions, and centralized management.
Network Infrastructure for Telecommuters
Integrating the network infrastructure required to support an at-home work environment can be particularly challenging if you have to manage a combination of personal hardware like desktop computers and laptops, routers, and wireless appliances from various vendors and with a mix of OS software and firmware levels. Progent's background providing online help for both outdated and current technologies in virtual office venues allows you to make cost-effective use of your available network infrastructure and provides you with ready access to expertise for making essential upgrades. Support services available from Progent to assist your company to implement a productive work-at-home infrastructure include:
VoIP Integration for an At-Home Workforce
Extending the corporate phone system to include teleworkers is critical to supporting a productive at-home workforce. A broad range of cloud-based VoIP products are popular with SMBs to support telecommuters. Many enterprises rely on Cisco's modern or legacy platforms for IP voice solutions. Progent can help businesses of any size to design or tune a telecommuter VoIP service that provides the flexibility, convenience and security required for telecommuters. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE IP Voice experts can provide high-level support to help businesses tune their current Cisco VoIP systems to support an expanding at-home workforce.
Voice/Video Conferencing for Remote Workers
A wide range of video conferencing platforms from leading vendors enable online discussions, video conferencing, chat, and screen/content sharing for both onsite users and telecommuters. Many organizations utilize a mix of products to meet the needs of their various partners and clients. Progent's communications experts can assist you to maintain your current voice/video conferencing environment and optimize the engagement of your at-home employees.
Microsoft Integrated Collaboration Platforms for Teleworkers
Microsoft's collaboration products are tightly integrated with Microsoft's familiar Office and Microsoft 365 families, offering a powerful ecosystem of applications that create a cohesive user interface for exchanging data and ideas across multiple sites and on a wide range of endpoints. Progent has provided online consulting support for Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange Server since their original releases and can help your company to deploy these critical collaboration platforms to maximize the productivity of your at-home workforce.
Microsoft's collaboration platforms are tightly integrated with Microsoft's popular Office suite, providing a rich ecosystem of applications that deliver a consistent user experience for sharing information across multiple sites and on a wide variety of endpoint devices. Progent has provided remote consulting services for SharePoint and Exchange since their initial releases and can help at-home workers set up and use these flagship collaboration platforms to maximize productivity.
Microsoft Teams works with Microsoft 365 and integrates with third-party cloud services to deliver real-time collaboration. Developed as a replacement for Skype for Business Online, Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium can enable chat, audio/video meetings that include screen sharing, calling, cloud voicemail, group email, plus file and application sharing. Teams is tightly integrated with Microsoft 365 and relies on Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Entra (previously branded Azure Active Directory) for supporting its complete range of capabilities. To learn more about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft Teams, visit solution design and deployment consulting for Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium.
SharePoint uses web entities to allow collaboration and knowledge sharing by providing policy-driven delivery of data, workflow, and utilities for searching through enterprise-wide business data. SharePoint enables you to build secure web portals that allows at-home workforce to see and update consolidated corporate intelligence by means of Wikis, Blogs, social networking web sites, and Web Parts (Widgets). To find out about Progent's SharePoint support services, refer to 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. For details about Progent's Exchange expertise, visit integration expertise for Exchange Server.
OneDrive is Microsoft�s shared cloud file hosting and synchronization service, comparable to GoogleDrive. At-home users can save files to OneDrive, and colleagues can access them securely through a browser. Provided with Office 365, OneDrive enables remote workers to jointly author documents. Edits created offline are automatically synced when you reconnect to the Internet. To learn about Progent's support services for OneDrive, go to Onedrive configuration experts.
Public Cloud Integration for At-Home Workers
Progent offers fast and affordable remote assistance for helping businesses to build, manage and repair cohesive network models that combine internal data centers, teleworkers, branches, and cloud resources. Progent offers expertise for all types of public cloud service delivery such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service. Progent can help teleworkers resolve problems with cloud access, identity, and cybersecurity.
Microsoft Azure is a leading family of cloud software and services that allows you to utilize infrastructure, servers, and critical apps running on Microsoft's massive cloud. Microsoft Azure includes more than one hundred services services such as the ability to host Windows and Linux-based virtual machines, scalable cloud storage, email and messaging, app development with Visual Studio, and data backup. Progent can help your organization to deploy virtual machines on Azure Virtual Machines, integrate storage on Azure Storage services, streamline identity management with Azure Active Directory, and design backup and recovery systems with Azure Backup. Progent can also help you establish protected connections to Azure for at-home workers by setting up and debugging firewalls and VPN IPsec tunnels. For information about Progent's support services for Microsoft Azure, refer to Azure expertise.
Microsoft 365, formerly branded Office 365, is Microsoft's growing suite of business productivity software and cloud-based services offered by subscription. Microsoft apps and cloud services are provided in a variety of bundles designed for customers ranging from individuals and small offices to large corporations. Progent offers fast and affordable online access to experts familiar with Microsoft 365-compatible devices based on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android technology. Progent's experts can assist you to evaluate the numerous subscription plans available for Microsoft 365 and configure 365 apps for your at-home workers in a way that delivers maximum business value. To find out about Progent's expertise for Microsoft 365, go to Microsoft 365 integration expertise.
Exchange Online is among the most popular applications in Azure-hosted Microsoft 365 product line. Microsoft 365 Exchange Online offers the benefits of lower spending for physical infrastructure, easier management, dynamic scaling, high reliability, and other benefits associated with public clouds. Microsoft has designed Exchange Online to run seamlessly with on-premises deployments of Exchange, allowing you to create hybrid information systems. Progent's Exchange consultants can provide as-needed help to guide you past tough IT roadblocks and also offer end-to-end project management outsourcing to ensure your teleworkers have convenient and safe access to your Exchange Online deployment. For information Progent's consulting expertise for Exchange Online, see Exchange Online configuration and troubleshooting consulting.
Amazon AWS is a trailblazer in the public cloud computing arena and is the industry's top provider of cloud services. Progent offers quick and economical online access to cloud connectivity experts who can help your organization to design, implement, maintain, and troubleshoot hybrid information networks that integrate Amazon AWS cloud services with local data centers and with other public clouds such as Microsoft Azure. Progent also offers the skills of Cisco-certified CCIE networking consultants to assist you to create a high-uptime network architecture to make sure your employees have a productive computing environment regardless of whether they are working from your main office, a branch office, at home, or on the move. To find out about Progent's expertise for Amazon AWS, visit Amazon AWS integration services.
Google Cloud Platform is a leading set of cloud services that offers Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service products. Progent's certified Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco consulting experts can assist you to extend your current IT assets with the Google Cloud, and Progent's database experts can help you make your critical apps cloud ready so your teleworkers can benefit fully from Google Cloud Platform services. Progent's consultants can help your business to set up virtual machines on Google Cloud Compute Engine, plan an efficient storage solution with GCP Storage services, and streamline identity management for telecommuters with GCP Cloud Identity. Progent's consultants can also assist you to use GCP's unified management technology to administer and track your GCP environment. To learn, visit Google Cloud Platform (GCP) consulting services.
Help Desk Call Center Support for Teleworkers
An emergency, company-wide changeover to a teleworker business model, which could be motivated by a pandemic or as part of a disaster recovery process, can overstretch even the most efficient internal Help Desk. Progent's Call Center services allow organizations of any size to outsource or supplement their Help Desk by using Progent's online Technical Response Center (TRC) team.
Security and Compliance for Teleworkers
At-home staff members commonly use their own devices and usually work in a poorly secured physical area. This increases their susceptibility to cyber attacks and calls for judicious deployment of corporate firewalls, anti-malware tools, MFA-based identity verification, remote endpoint monitoring, thorough user training, and the development of security policies based on best practices. Progent's veteran team of data security support consultants can assist your business to plan, configure and maintain a compliant security solution that protects critical information assets in networks that include at-home workers.
Firewalls enable companies to create a network environment that can be securely utilized by local users as well as by telecommuters, mobile employees, suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders. Modern firewall devices permit you to assign and manage appropriate permissions to different groups of users and to scale your IT network and adjust your security profile as your company evolves and as network attacks grow increasingly complex. Progent works with both current and legacy security appliances from all major manufacturers including Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, WatchGuard, Juniper, and Fortinet. To learn more about Progent's firewall configuration services, refer to firewall integration and support services.
Remote Endpoint Monitoring makes it possible to watch over the disparate devices utilized by remote workers and either reject or identify and mitigate modern threats such as ransomware. With Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) services, a lightweight agent is installed on every protected endpoint, watching all activity and using advanced machine learning and full execution context from SentinelOne to detect new threats at inception. When a cyberattack is spotted, ProSight Active Security Monitoring immediately isolates the infected endpoint from the corporate network to contain the threat. Since the ProSight ASM software agent is self-contained, endpoint devices remain secure even when they are offline. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. To learn more about ProSight ASM, go to remote endpoint monitoring for an at-home workforce.
Progent's Duo MFA Service Plans incorporate Cisco's Duo technology to protect against password theft by using two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo supports one-tap identity confirmation on Apple iOS, Google Android, and other out-of-band devices. With 2FA, when you sign into a protected application and give your password you are requested to verify who you are on a device that only you have and that is accessed using a different ("out-of-band") network channel. A wide selection of out-of-band devices can be used for this added means of authentication such as a smartphone or watch, a hardware token, a landline telephone, etc. You can designate multiple validation devices. For more information about ProSight Duo two-factor identity authentication services, go to Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication services for an at-home workforce.
Security Audits can assess the exposure of your information system to all types of outside and local security threats for a network that incorporates telecommuters. Progent can run remote, automated security analysis software for rapidly and economically detecting a wide variety of security gaps that can be found via the Internet. Progent's security audit consulting services, which can be provided by security professionals with top certifications such as CISA, ISSAP, and GIAC, can assist your company to audit your procedures and policies and assess your WAN architecture to allow you to implement the highest level of protection for your an at-home workforce.
Horizon3.ai's NodeZero PEN Testing Platform is a leading-edge penetration test (pentest) product family that supports automated threat assessment of your at-home environment as well as your internal and perimeter networks so you can identify, rank, fix, and verify security weaknesses before threat actors can exploit them. Progent's pentest experts can assist you to deploy NodeZero to carry out thorough pentests of your network perimeter and your internal network so you can evaluate your present security profile. Progent's NodeZero experts can also help you to harden your network security and can help you to plan and implement a cohesive cybersecurity strategy that streamlines management and provides maximum cyber defense for on-prem, multi-cloud, at-home, and perimeter IT resources. To find out additional information about Progent's vulnerability analysis solutions powered by on NodeZero's penetration test platform, see Consulting Services for NodeZero's Penetration Test Platform.
Download White Paper: Securing a Work-From-Home Network
To read or download a white paper about critical areas to focus on for securing an IT environment that includes telecommuters, click:
Securing a Work-From-Home Network White Paper. (PDF - 2.4 MB)
Data Protection for At-Home Workers
The field of Data Protection covers saving and recovering vital data so as to avoid data loss and reduce recovery time and effort in the event of storage failures due to equipment breakdowns, programming hiccups, human mistakes, cyber attack, or any other reason. Dependable data protection strategies can be particularly challenging to architect and maintain in hybrid environments that combine local data centers, public clouds, and an at-home workforce.
Unified Management for an At-Home Workforce
Microsoft has renamed and reshuffled its endpoint management products under the name Microsoft Endpoint Manager, which includes Intune for cloud management of remote devices and Configuration Manager for managing on-premises computers. Endpoint Manager provides a unified environment for safeguarding critical data by managing local, mobile, and home-based endpoint devices.
Intune
Intune is a component of Microsoft's Endpoint Management family that also includes Microsoft Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud service for managing and securing remote computers and software. Managed endpoint devices can be user owned or business owned. IT admins managing the enrolled endpoint computers of teleworkers can use Intune to provision and authenticate applications on devices, push updates and certificates, set up rules for permission to access data and networks, manage passwords, create VPN connections, determine how teleworkers share data, set up threat protection, ensure security compliance, and erase corporate information from missing, stolen or deactivated devices. Microsoft Intune can be used with Apple iOS, Google Android, Windows, and macOS computers. To find out about Microsoft Intune and to find out how Progent can assist your company to use this platform to manage the endpoint computers of your teleworkers, go to Intune telecommuter endpoint management experts.
VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is an advanced unified Mobile Device Management product that allows network managers to keep remote endpoints up to date and secure. Workspace ONE uses VMware AirWatch technology for unified endpoint administration along with VMware's Horizon virtual software delivery platform for authorization control, application management, and configuration management of endpoints. Workspace ONE operates with devices based on Windows 10, macOS, Apple iOS, Google Android, Chrome OS, or leading distros of Linux. VMware Workspace ONE is offered by subscription as a cloud service or as an on-premises deployment through a perpetual license. Key capabilities of Workspace ONE include rapid remote deployment of out-of-the-box laptops, quick onboarding of new users, policy set up and enforcement for all classes of endpoints, unifies management reporting and analytics, an email encryption gateway, and integration with Microsoft applications and cloud-based products. To find out about Progent's support for VMware Workspace ONE, refer to VMware Workspace ONE remote device management consultants.
Contact Progent for At-Home Worker Expertise
To contact Progent about building and maintaining a productive work-from-home environment for your Baton Rouge, Louisiana organization, phone