Expanding your remote workforce can have a significant impact on IT architecture, cybersecurity, and corporate culture. Progent has 20 years of experience assisting small and mid-size businesses to design, deploy, administer, optimize, and debug IT networks that support at-home workers. Progent can assist your Sacramento company to pick the appropriate technologies and follow best practices in building and operating a secure virtual office solution for teleworkers that promotes collaboration and returns maximum value. Progent can provide services ranging from as-needed expertise for getting you past occasional IT bottlenecks to full project management to help you carry out business-critical tasks.
Progent can assist Sacramento, California businesses to succeed with any facet of creating a high-functioning work-at-home ecosystem by providing network infrastructure design and configuration services, IP voice expertise, video conferencing integration, collaboration platform customization and training, cloud integration, Call Desk outsourcing, endpoint security, data protection solutions, and unified management.
Network Infrastructure for an At-Home Workforce
Configuring the network infrastructure needed for an at-home work environment can be particularly challenging if you have to manage a combination of worker-owned hardware such as desktop computers and laptops, Internet routers, and Wi-Fi APs from an assortment of vendors and with a variety of OS software and firmware levels. Progent's experience delivering remote support for both outdated and modern technologies in remote office solutions enables you to make efficient use of your existing network infrastructure and provides you with fast access to top-tire consultants for making essential updates. Services available from Progent to help you to implement a productive work-at-home infrastructure include:
VoIP Integration for Teleworkers
Extending the business phone system to include teleworkers is critical to supporting a productive at-home workforce. A broad range of cloud-centric VoIP platforms are used by SMBs to server teleworkers. Many larger organizations rely on Cisco's modern or older platforms for VoIP solutions. Progent can assist organizations of all sizes to plan or tune a telecommuter IP voice environment that provides the flexibility, transparency and protection required for at-home workers. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE IP Voice experts can provide high-level support to assist businesses optimize their current Cisco VoIP systems to support an expanding at-home workforce.
Video Conferencing for Telecommuters
A wide selection of video conferencing platforms from leading vendors enable online meetings, video conferencing, chat sessions, and screen/content sharing for both onsite users and telecommuters. Many companies utilize multiple conferencing products to meet the needs of their various partners and clients. Progent's communications experts can assist your organization to maintain your current conferencing ecosystem and optimize the engagement of your remote employees.
Microsoft Collaboration Software for Remote and Hybrid Workers
Microsoft's collaboration products are closely integrated with Microsoft's familiar Office families, offering a rich environment of productivity apps that deliver a cohesive user experience for sharing data and ideas across a corporate network and on a wide selection of endpoint devices. Progent has provided online consulting services for Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange since their first publication and can help your company to tune these flagship collaboration platforms to optimize the effectiveness 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 on top of Microsoft 365 and supports third-party cloud services to provide real-time collaboration. Designed as a substitute for Skype for Business Online, Microsoft Teams can support chat, audio/video meetings that include screen sharing, phone calls, cloud voicemail, group email, plus file and app sharing. Teams is tightly integrated with Microsoft 365 and relies on Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Azure Entra (formerly branded Azure Active Directory) for delivering its complete range of features. For details about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft Teams, see planning and configuration consulting for Microsoft Teams.
SharePoint uses web entities to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing by offering policy-driven delivery of data, business processes, and utilities for looking through company-wide information silos. SharePoint permits you to build secure web portals that allows at-home workers to see and edit aggregated business intelligence via Wikis, Blogs, social networking web sites, and Web Parts. To find out about Progent's SharePoint consulting expertise, go to SharePoint integration and application development consulting.
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 find out about Progent's Exchange consulting services, go to integration consulting services for Microsoft Exchange Server.
OneDrive is Microsoft�s collaborative cloud-based file hosting and synchronization service, similar to GoogleDrive. At-home users can save files to the OneDrive service, and colleagues anywhere can access them securely via a browser. Provided with Office 365, OneDrive enables home employees to jointly author documents. Revisions created offline are automatically synced when you reconnect to the Internet. To learn about Progent's expertise for OneDrive, refer to Microsoft Onedrive integration consulting.
Public Cloud Integration Services for At-Home Workers
Progent can provide advanced remote assistance for helping organizations to create, manage and troubleshoot integrated hybrid network models that combine physical data centers, at-home workers, branch offices, plus public cloud resources. Progent can provide expertise for all modes of public cloud service delivery including Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service. Progent can help telecommuters resolve issues with public cloud connectivity, authentication, and security.
Microsoft Azure is a popular family of cloud services that enables you to use infrastructure, virtual servers, and critical applications running on Microsoft's massive cloud. Azure features over 100 services services such as hosting for Windows and Linux-based VMs, scalable cloud storage, email and messaging, app development with Visual Studio, and backup/restore. Progent can help you to deploy virtual machines on Azure Virtual Machines, integrate cloud-based storage on Azure Storage services, streamline identity management with Azure Active Directory, and design backup and recovery systems with Azure Backup. Progent can also show you how to establish protected connections to Azure for at-home workers by configuring and debugging firewalls and VPN IPsec tunnels. To find out about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft Azure, see Azure consulting.
Microsoft 365, formerly called Office 365, is Microsoft's popular family of business productivity software and cloud services offered on a subscription basis. Microsoft apps and cloud services are marketed in a variety of bundles intended for users ranging from students and households to major corporations. Progent offers fast and easy online access to consultants knowledgeable about Microsoft 365-compatible devices running Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android technology. Progent's experts can assist you to assess the various subscription plans offered with Microsoft 365 and configure 365 applications for your at-home workers in a way that delivers top business value. To learn about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft 365, see Microsoft 365 integration expertise.
Exchange Online is among the most popular applications in the Microsoft 365 product suite. Exchange Online provides the benefits of lower spending for physical infrastructure, simplified management, on-demand scaling, high availability, and additional benefits inherent with public clouds. Microsoft has designed Exchange Online to run seamlessly with on-premises Exchange environments, enabling customers to build hybrid information systems. Progent's Exchange consultants can provide occasional assistance to get you through tough technical bottlenecks and can also provide end-to-end project management outsourcing to ensure your at-home workers have convenient and secure access to your Exchange Online environment. For information Progent's consulting services for Microsoft 365 Exchange Online, visit Microsoft 365 Exchange Online integration and support consulting.
Amazon AWS is a trailblazer in the public cloud computing market and is the world's leading provider of cloud-based services. Progent offers fast and economical online contact with cloud connectivity experts who can help your business to plan, implement, maintain, and debug hybrid information networks that incorporate Amazon AWS cloud services with on-premises data centers and with other popular cloud platforms such as Azure. Progent also offers the skills of Cisco-certified CCIE networking consultants to assist your company to create a high-availability network model to make sure your employees have a productive computing environment whether they are working from your main office, a remote branch, at home, or on the move. For information about Progent's expertise for Amazon AWS, see Amazon AWS integration support.
Google Cloud Platform is a popular suite of cloud computing services that offers Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service products. Progent's certified Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco consulting experts can assist your business to expand your current IT resources with the Google Cloud, and Progent's DBA consultants can help you make your critical apps cloud ready so your teleworkers can take full advantage of Google Cloud services. Progent's consultants can assist you to set up virtual machines on Google Cloud Compute Engine, plan an efficient storage solution with GCP Storage services, and streamline identity control for remote workers with GCP Cloud Identity. Progent's experts can also help your business to use GCP's management tools to control and track your GCP environment. For details, refer to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) consulting expertise.
Help Desk Call Center Services for Teleworkers
A sudden, enterprise-wide transition to a telecommuter business model, which might be the result of a pandemic or as an element of a business continuity preparedness plan, can overwhelm even a well-staffed internal Help Desk. Progent's Help Desk services allow businesses of any size to outsource or supplement their Call Desk by using Progent's online Technical Response Center (TRC) team.
Cybersecurity for Remote Workers
Work-from-Home employees typically use their personal devices and often operate in a poorly secured physical space. This situation increases their susceptibility to malware threats and calls for careful configuration of corporate firewalls, AV tools, MFA-based identity verification, remote endpoint monitoring, thorough end-user education, and the creation of policies built on best practices. Progent's seasoned roster of data security solutions experts can help you to plan, configure and maintain an effective cybersecurity solution that guards vital IT assets in networks that incorporate telecommuters.
Firewalls enable you to create a network that can be safely utilized by local users and by telecommuters, mobile users, vendors, clients, and the public. Modern firewall devices permit you to assign and manage different access rights to different classes of users and to scale your network and adjust your security profile as your company evolves and as cyber threats become more sophisticated. Progent works with both current and legacy firewall devices from all major manufacturers like Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Check Point, Juniper, and Fortinet. For details about Progent's firewall configuration services, go to firewall support expertise.
Online Endpoint Security Monitoring makes it possible to watch over the disparate computers utilized by remote workers and either reject or spot and respond to modern threats like ransomware. With Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) services, a small-footprint agent is put on each secured endpoint device, watching all activity and using state-of-the-art machine learning from SentinelOne to detect zero-day threats before they can spread. When an attack is spotted, ProSight ASM immediately disconnects the infected device from the corporate network to quarantine the threat. Because the ProSight ASM software agent is self-contained, endpoint devices stay protected even if they are offline. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, dealer, and integrator. To find out more about ProSight ASM, visit remote endpoint monitoring for telecommuters.
Progent's Duo authentication Services utilize Cisco's Duo cloud technology to protect against compromised passwords by using two-factor authentication. Duo supports single-tap identity confirmation on Apple iOS, Google Android, and other out-of-band devices. Using 2FA, whenever you log into a secured online account and enter your password you are asked to verify who you are via a device that only you have and that uses a different ("out-of-band") network channel. A wide range of out-of-band devices can be utilized as this second means of authentication such as a smartphone or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You may register multiple verification devices. To learn more about Duo two-factor identity validation services, go to Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services for remote workers.
Security Audits can assess the vulnerability of your network to all types of outside and local security threats for a network that incorporates an at-home workforce. Progent can run online, automated security analysis scanning for quickly and economically detecting a wide variety of security weaknesses that can be found via the Internet. Progent's security assessment consulting services, which can be provided by network security experts with advanced certifications including CISM, CISSP, and GIAC, can help your business to audit your workflows and governance policies and review your network architecture to enable you to implement top-level protection for your remote workers.
Horizon3.ai's NodeZero Pentest Platform is a cutting-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 expose, prioritize, remediate, and verify security weaknesses before threat actors can take advantage of them. Progent's pentest experts can assist you to deploy NodeZero to carry out comprehensive penetration tests of your perimeter and your internal network so you can evaluate your current security profile. Progent can also assist you to harden your network security and can assist you to plan and implement a cohesive cybersecurity strategy that streamlines management and delivers optimum cyber defense for on-premises, multi-cloud, remote, and perimeter IT resources. To learn additional information about Progent's vulnerability assessment services powered by on NodeZero's penetration test platform, visit Consulting Services for NodeZero's Penetration Test Products.
Download White Paper: Securing a Work-From-Home Environment
To read or download a white paper describing critical areas to focus on for securing a network that includes work-from-home staff, click:
Securing a Work-From-Home Network White Paper. (PDF - 2.4 MB)
Data Protection Solutions for At-Home Workers
The field of Data Protection covers backing up and restoring critical information in order to avoid data loss and minimize recovery time in case of storage failures due to equipment breakdowns, programming hiccups, operator error, malware, or other causes. Dependable data protection solutions can be particularly challenging to architect and manage in hybrid networks that incorporate local data centers, public clouds, and an at-home workforce.
Unified Management for an At-Home Workforce
Microsoft has rebranded and reshuffled its endpoint management platforms under the name Microsoft Endpoint Manager, which includes Intune for cloud-based management of remote devices and Configuration Manager for managing on-premises endpoints. Endpoint Manager offers a unified environment for protecting critical information by managing onsite, mobile, and at-home endpoints.
Intune
Intune is part of Microsoft's Endpoint Management suite that also includes Microsoft Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud service for managing and securing remote devices and applications. Remote endpoint computers can be personally owned or company owned. IT administrators managing the enrolled endpoint computers of teleworkers can use Intune to deploy and validate applications on devices, push updates and certificates, configure policies for accessing information and resources, manage passwords, establish VPN tunnels, determine how telecommuters share information, establish threat protection, verify compliance, and delete sensitive information from lost, stolen or decommissioned endpoint devices. Intune runs with iOS, Google Android, Windows, and macOS/OS X devices. To find out about Microsoft Intune and how Progent can assist you to use Microsoft's Endpoint Management to administer the endpoint computers of your at-home workforce, visit Intune mobile device management consultants.
VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is a feature-rich unified MDM platform that allows network administrators to keep offsite endpoint devices current and protected. Workspace ONE incorporates VMware AirWatch for unified endpoint administration combined with VMware's Horizon virtual application delivery technology for access control, application management, and setup management of endpoints. Workspace ONE runs with devices based on 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-site product through a one-time purchase. Key capabilities of VMware Workspace ONE include rapid remote deployment of out-of-the-box laptops, quick onboarding of new employees, policy set up and enforcement for all categories of endpoints, aggregated management reporting and analytics, email encryption, and integration with Microsoft apps and cloud services. For details about Progent's support for VMware Workspace ONE, see VMware Workspace ONE mobile device management expertise.
Contact Progent for At-Home Worker Expertise
To contact Progent about building and maintaining a productive telecommuter environment for your Sacramento, California business, phone