An increasing proportion of the workforce has set their eyes toward a permanently remote or hybrid-office environment. As more companies examine how to successfully transition into this new organizational structure, it becomes more important to identify areas of the business that will need more support during this time.
For IT professionals, troubleshooting was once a routine aspect of their daily job. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Zendesk had found that internal support teams received almost 500 request tickets every month, with each taking upwards of 24 hours to respond to. However, these metrics were recorded in an environment where the majority of employees were working on-location.
When factoring in considerations of today’s corporate world, including assistance with personal devices, residential WiFi networks or logging on remotely, it is likely that IT resources have become even more strained. Read on to learn about some of the essentials for your new troubleshooting toolkit.
Proactive patch management tools
One of the most effective ways for IT professionals to stay ahead of potential support tickets is to proactively defend devices instead of waiting for an issue to appear.
AT&T recommends that organizations continuously monitor and update software and other digital assets as patches are released. However, experts recognize that most small to mid-sized enterprises simply don’t have the resources to support such a labor-intensive task. For these SMEs, an effective compromise is to automate patch management practices to help keep devices running efficiently and to protect them from potential security vulnerabilities.
If your team does not have the ability to create your own automated system, employing an existing solution can help. Real-time dashboards, reports and alerts will inform IT when these necessary updates are available and ready to be deployed. Plus, you can automatically receive a detailed report of install statuses including any system failures that may require individual attention.
Oftentimes, individual users disregard notifications related to patches for fear of losing access to their device or experiencing a long-term workstation failure. By creating structured maintenance periods and setting schedules for different business groups within your organization, IT will be able to minimize downtime and maximize productivity.
With an increasing number of employees across the globe utilizing their personal devices and WiFi connections to access corporate networks, remote deploying these critical patches can reduce the strain on IT while also boosting your overall security.
Screen-sharing applications
If users have noticed an issue with their device, screen-sharing applications will prove essential in troubleshooting.
For users who lack the technological knowledge to fully describe the issue to your support team, it will be time-consuming and difficult to identify and mitigate the problem. Remote desktop protocol can provide IT access to a desktop or to applications stored on the device, even if it is a personal computer. This allows support staff to connect, access and control data and other resources on the host server as if they were doing it from their own desk.
Streamlining troubleshooting processes is essential to not only minimizing user downtime, but also ensuring that potentially serious risks are isolated before they become a real issue.
By giving your IT team direct access to devices as necessary through screen-sharing applications, they can more quickly rectify an issue and take the appropriate steps if there is a threat to your organizational network.
Reboot-to–restart
While patch management tools and screen-sharing applications can help your IT team to take a proactive approach to troubleshooting, potential security threats can still sometimes get through. In these worst-case scenarios, reboot-to-restart technologies provide your organization with a game-changing line of defense.
If individual users or your support team flag a potential issue with an endpoint, they can instantly restart the device and restore it to the default settings preconfigured by IT. This technology achieves license compliance, reducing the high expenses associated with potential noncompliance fines.
By empowering your end users with reboot-to-restart technology, you can also reduce some of the strain felt by your IT team. Rather than managing every trivial issue, they can instead focus their efforts on more high-risk issues or critical operational activities.
Finding the right tools for your team
With so many options on the market, it can be overwhelming for companies to identify which tools will help their IT operations to excel.
For 25 years, Faronics has helped over 30,000 customers across 150 countries achieve improved security and productivity while reducing their costs associated with downfime and risk management. Our expansive solutions can provide your team with patch automation tools, screen-sharing applications, reboot-to-restart technology and more.
Defend your valuable data while supporting your team’s transition to a remote world. If you have any additional questions or are interested in taking the first steps to improve your remote troubleshooting capabilities, contact us today.
