Expanding your remote workforce can have a significant impact on IT infrastructure, security/compliance, and company workflows. Progent has 20 years of experience assisting SMBs to design, configure, manage, optimize, and troubleshoot IT environments that support work-from-home employees. Progent can assist your Salt Lake City company to select the appropriate technologies and follow leading practices in building and operating a secure virtual solution for teleworkers that promotes collaboration and returns maximum business value. Progent offers support services that go from as-needed guidance for helping you over occasional technical roadblocks to full project management or co-management to help you successfully complete business-critical tasks.
Progent's consultants can help Salt Lake City, Utah organizations to succeed with any facet of creating a high-performing telecommuting environment by providing network infrastructure design and configuration services, VoIP PBX expertise, video conferencing integration, collaboration platform selection and deployment, public cloud integration, Call Desk augmentation, security and compliance, backup/restore solutions, and streamlined management.
Network Infrastructure for Teleworkers
Configuring the network infrastructure needed to support an at-home workforce can be particularly challenging if you must accommodate a mix of personal hardware such as desktop computers and notebooks, routers, and Wi-Fi appliances from an assortment of manufacturers and with a variety of OS software and firmware releases. Progent's background providing remote support for both outdated and modern technologies in virtual office solutions enables you to make efficient use of your available infrastructure and provides you with ready access to top-tire consultants for making necessary upgrades. Services offered by Progent to help your company to implement a high-functioning telecommuting infrastructure include:
IP Voice Integration for Telecommuters
Expanding the business PBX system to include teleworkers is critical to supporting an effective work-at-home solution. A broad range of cloud-centric digital PBX products are used by small and mid-size businesses to server teleworkers. Many enterprises depend on Cisco's modern or older products for VoIP solutions. Progent can help organizations of all sizes to plan or tune a telecommuter VoIP service that delivers the versatility, transparency and protection needed for teleworkers. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE Voice experts can provide high-level support to help organizations tune their current Cisco IP voice environments to handle an expanding at-home workforce.
Video Conferencing for Remote Workers
A wide range of video conferencing platforms from major vendors support online discussions, video and voice conferencing, chat, and screen sharing for both local workers and at-home workers. Many companies use a mix of conferencing products to meet the needs of their various partners and customers. Progent's communications experts can help you to maintain your existing conferencing ecosystem and enhance the engagement of your remote workforce.
Microsoft Collaboration Platforms for Teleworkers
Microsoft's collaboration products are closely integrated with Microsoft's popular Office suites, offering a powerful ecosystem of applications that create a consistent user interface for sharing information throughout multiple sites and on a wide range of endpoint computers. Progent has delivered remote consulting support for Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange Server since their original releases and can assist businesses to tune these critical collaboration products to maximize the effectiveness of your remote workers.
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. Developed as a replacement for Skype for Business Online, Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium can support chat, audio/video meetings with screen sharing, calling, cloud voicemail, group email, as well as file and app sharing. Teams is closely integrated with Microsoft 365 and depends 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 and Teams Premium, visit solution design and deployment consulting for Microsoft Teams.
SharePoint uses web entities to enable collaboration and information sharing by providing policy-driven delivery of content, business processes, and tools for searching through enterprise-wide business data. SharePoint allows you to create secure web portals that permits remote workforce to see and update consolidated business intelligence via Intranets (Wikis), Blogs, social web sites, and Web Parts (Widgets). To find out about Progent's SharePoint expertise, see 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 learn about Progent's Exchange consulting services, refer to deployment consulting for Microsoft Exchange.
OneDrive is Microsoft�s shared cloud-based file hosting and synchronization service, similar to GoogleDrive. Remote workers can store files to OneDrive, and colleagues anywhere can access them safely via a browser. Provided with Office 365, OneDrive enables at-home employees to jointly author documents. Revisions created offline are automatically uploaded when you go back online. To learn about Progent's consulting expertise for Microsoft OneDrive, visit Microsoft Onedrive integration consulting.
Cloud Integration for Teleworkers
Progent can provide fast and affordable online assistance for enabling businesses to build, maintain and repair cohesive network architectures that include internal data centers, telecommuters, branches, plus public cloud services. Progent can provide top-tier consultant for all types of cloud service including Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Software as a Service (SaaS). Progent can help telecommuters fix problems with public cloud connectivity, identity, and cybersecurity.
Microsoft Azure is a leading platform for cloud software and services that enables you to utilize infrastructure, servers, and key apps running on Microsoft's massive cloud. Microsoft Azure features over 100 cloud-based services such as hosting for Windows and Linux-powered virtual machines, scalable cloud storage, email and messaging, app development with Visual Studio, and backup/restore. Progent can help your organization to set up virtual machines on Azure Virtual Machines, integrate storage on Azure Storage services, unify identity control with Azure AD, and plan backup and restore solutions with Azure Backup. Progent can also show you how to create secure connections to Azure for remote workers by configuring and troubleshooting firewalls and VPN tunnels. For details about Progent's consulting expertise for Microsoft Azure, go to Microsoft Azure consulting services.
Microsoft 365, formerly branded Office 365, is Microsoft's popular suite of client productivity software and cloud-based services offered on a subscription basis. Office apps and services are provided in a variety of plans designed for customers ranging from individuals and small offices to major enterprises. Progent can provide quick and easy remote access to experts knowledgeable about Microsoft 365-compatible clients running Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android operating systems. Progent's experts can help your business to evaluate the numerous subscription bundles available for Microsoft 365 and configure 365 applications for your telecommuters in a way that delivers maximum business value. To find out about Progent's expertise for Microsoft 365, visit Microsoft 365 integration services.
Microsoft 365 Exchange Online is one of the most widely used applications in Azure-hosted Microsoft 365 product suite. Exchange Online provides the benefits of lower spending for data center infrastructure, easier management, dynamic scaling, high reliability, and other advantages associated with cloud computing. Microsoft has engineered Exchange Online to operate smoothly with local deployments of Exchange, enabling customers to build hybrid cloud/onsite networks. Progent's certified Exchange consultants are available for occasional help to guide you past challenging technical bottlenecks and can also provide end-to-end project management services to ensure your remote workers have convenient and safe access to your Exchange Online deployment. For details Progent's consulting expertise for Microsoft 365 Exchange Online, go to Microsoft 365 Exchange Online integration and support consulting.
Amazon AWS is a pioneer in the public cloud market and is the industry's biggest source of cloud services. Progent offers quick and affordable online access to cloud connectivity experts who can assist your organization to design, implement, maintain, and troubleshoot hybrid information networks that integrate Amazon AWS cloud services with local data centers and with other popular cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure. Progent also offers the skills of Cisco-certified CCIE networking experts to assist you to build a high-uptime network architecture so your employees have a consistent computing environment whether they are working from your headquarters, a branch office, at home, or on the road. For information about Progent's consulting services for Amazon AWS, refer to Amazon AWS integration services.
Google Cloud is a popular suite of cloud services that offers Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service products. Progent's Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco experts can help your business to extend your existing IT assets with the Google Cloud Platform, and Progent's DBA experts can show you how to make your key apps cloud ready so your teleworkers can take full advantage of Google Cloud Platform services. Progent can assist your business to set up virtual machines on GCP Compute Engine, design a cost-effective storage solution with Google Cloud Storage services, and simplify access control for telecommuters with Google Cloud Identity services. Progent can also help you to use GCP's unified management technology to administer and track your GCP environment. For details, see Google Cloud Platform (GCP) consulting expertise.
Help Desk Call Center Services for At-Home Workers
A sudden, enterprise-wide changeover to a telecommuter business model, which could be the result of a pandemic or as part of a disaster recovery/business continuity process, can overstretch even the most efficient internal Call Desk. Progent's Call Center services make it possible for businesses to outsource or supplement their Support Desk with Progent's online Technical Response Center (TRC) services.
Security for Remote Workers
At-home workers typically utilize their personal computing devices and usually work in an unsecured physical area. This increases their susceptibility to malware attacks and calls for careful configuration of corporate firewalls, AV tools, multi-factor authentication, remote monitoring, thorough end-user education, and the creation of policies based on leading practices. Progent's seasoned roster of IT security support consultants can help you to plan, deploy and manage a compliant security solution that guards critical IT assets in environments that include an at-home workforce.
Firewalls enable companies to build a network environment that can be securely utilized by local users and by an at-home workforce, mobile users, suppliers, clients, and other stakeholders. Modern firewall devices allow you to assign and manage different permissions to various groups of users and to scale your IT network and modify your cybersecurity posture as your company evolves and as cyber threats grow more sophisticated. Progent works with both current and older security devices from all leading vendors like Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, WatchGuard, Juniper, SonicWall and Fortinet. For more information about Progent's firewall integration services, go to firewall integration and support services.
Online Endpoint Security Monitoring makes it possible to track the various devices utilized by teleworkers and either block or identify and respond to modern threats such as ransomware. With ProSight Active Security Monitoring services, a lightweight software agent is put on every secured endpoint device, watching all activity and using advanced machine learning from SentinelOne to identify new attacks before they can spread. When a cyberattack is discovered, ProSight ASM instantly disconnects the impacted device from the corporate network to quarantine the malware. Since the ProSight ASM software agent is self-contained, endpoints remain protected even when they are not connected to the Internet. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, dealer, and integrator. To find out more about ProSight Active Security Monitoring, see remote endpoint security monitoring for telecommuters.
Progent's Duo authentication Service Plans incorporate Cisco's Duo cloud technology to defend against stolen passwords through the use of two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo supports one-tap identity verification with Apple iOS, Google Android, and other out-of-band devices. With Duo 2FA, whenever you sign into a protected online account and give your password you are asked to confirm who you are on a device that only you have and that is accessed using a different network channel. A wide range of out-of-band devices can be utilized as this second form of authentication such as a smartphone or wearable, a hardware token, a landline telephone, etc. You can register multiple verification devices. To learn more about ProSight Duo two-factor identity validation services, go to Duo MFA two-factor authentication services for at-home workers.
Security Audits can assess the vulnerability of your information system to all types of external and local security threats for a network that includes an at-home workforce. Progent can deploy online, automated security analysis scanning for rapidly and affordably detecting a broad range of security gaps that can be surfaced via the Internet. Progent's security assessment experts, which can be managed by security professionals with top certifications such as CISM, ISSAP, and GIAC, can help your business to audit your operations and governance policies and assess your network architecture to allow you to implement top-level security for your telecommuters.
Horizon3.ai's NodeZero PEN Testing Platform is a leading-edge penetration test (pentest) product family that can deliver automated threat assessment of your at-home environment as well as your internal and perimeter networks to help you find, rank, fix, and verify cybersecurity vulnerabilities before threat actors can take advantage of them. Progent can help you to use NodeZero to perform thorough penetration tests of your network perimeter and your internal network so you can evaluate your present security profile. Progent's NodeZero experts can also assist you to harden your network security and can assist you to plan and implement a cohesive cybersecurity strategy that simplifies management and delivers maximum protection for on-prem, cloud-based, at-home, and perimeter IT assets. To learn more information about Progent's threat analysis services based on on NodeZero's PEN test products, see Consulting Support for NodeZero's PEN Test Products.
Download White Paper: Protecting a Work-From-Home Network
To view or download a white paper describing critical areas to focus on for protecting a network that supports telecommuters, click:
Securing a Work-From-Home Network White Paper. (PDF - 2.4 MB)
Data Protection Solutions for Teleworkers
Data Protection involves saving and restoring vital information in order to prevent data loss and reduce recovery time in case of storage system failures resulting from hardware breakdowns, programming hiccups, human mistakes, cyber attack, or other causes. Reliable data protection solutions can be especially difficult to architect and maintain in hybrid networks that incorporate private data centers, cloud resources, and at-home workers.
Unified Management for Remote Workers
Microsoft has renamed and reshuffled its endpoint management platforms under the name Microsoft Endpoint Manager, which encompasses Intune for cloud management of mobile and remote devices and Configuration Manager for managing onsite computers. Endpoint Manager provides a unified environment for safeguarding critical information by managing on-premises, mobile, and at-home endpoint devices.
Microsoft Intune
Intune is part of Microsoft's Endpoint Management suite that also includes Microsoft Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud-based service for managing and securing off-premises computers and software. Managed endpoint computers can be user owned or company owned. Network admins managing the enrolled endpoint devices of teleworkers can utilize Intune to provision and validate apps on devices, push patches and certificates, set up policies for accessing data and networks, set passwords, establish VPN connections, control how telecommuters share information, set up threat protection, verify security compliance, and wipe corporate information from lost, stolen or deactivated devices. Microsoft Intune runs with iOS, Google Android, Windows, and macOS/OS X devices. For information about Intune and how Progent can help you to use this platform to administer the endpoint devices of your at-home workforce, see Intune telecommuter device management consultants.
VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is an advanced centralized Mobile Device Management (MDM) platform that allows network managers to keep offsite endpoints up to date and protected. Workspace ONE uses VMware AirWatch technology for centralized endpoint management combined with VMware's Horizon virtual application delivery platform for access control, application management, and setup management of endpoint devices. Workspace ONE operates with devices based on Windows 10, macOS, Apple iOS, Android, Chrome OS, or leading distros of Linux. VMware Workspace ONE is offered by subscription as a cloud-based service or as an on-site deployment through a one-time purchase. Top features of VMware Workspace ONE include rapid remote deployment of new notebooks, immediate onboarding of new employees, policy set up and enforcement for all classes of devices, aggregated management reporting and analytics, email encryption, and tight integration with Microsoft applications and cloud-based services. For information about Progent's support for VMware Workspace ONE, visit VMware Workspace ONE remote device management consultants.
Contact Progent for Telecommuter Expertise
To contact Progent about creating and maintaining a productive work-from-home environment for your Salt Lake City, Utah company, phone