Ensuring regular updates across workstations has never been easy. But with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing many teams into a remote setup, visibility has become a persistent IT challenge. As many organizations look for ways to incorporate remote work permanently, even after the pandemic ends, adjusting to the “new normal” will be imperative to keeping data secure.
How a remote environment impacts visibility
In short, a remote setup makes the IT professional’s job harder because it disperses responsibility to employees. While a traditional office setting meant that IT professionals were only responsible for on-site workstations and a single central network, today’s workers are using devices and networks far outside of the IT visibility window. In fact, according to a survey from SailPoint, only 17% of remote workers are using a device provided by their employer. In addition, the remote environment means that employees have the option of working on unsecured public networks.
The variability of remote working setups also introduces the possibility that workers will be using new applications that are outside your purview. Even before the pandemic, the sheer number of applications employees were using added complexity to IT jobs. One 2018 report from Pega found that employees were on average using about 35 job-critical applications and switching between them more than 1,000 times per day.
Ultimately, all of this has a real impact on the IT team’s ability to manage applications and perform updates, especially on legacy software.
The importance of patching and updates
You probably don’t need to be told twice about the importance of updates. Not only do updates improve the functionality of your organization’s applications, but they also include security patches that inundate your network from potential threats. In many cases, hackers will take advantage of a network vulnerability for which a patch already exists, but was not installed. Perhaps the most prominent example of this phenomenon was the 2017 Equifax data breach, which exposed the personal information of about 148 million Americans to hackers and left the credit reporting agency liable for multiple major lawsuits. While your organization may not be dealing with the same kinds of sensitive data, the privacy of your information still deserves to be protected.
Unfortunately, with all of the changes to IT protocol in the past year, application and system updates are often lost in the mix. According to one August 2020 survey of more than 1,800 IT professionals from the Ponemon Institute, found that workers were unable to prioritize patching, leaving them susceptible to an average of 57,55 identified potential vulnerabilities. The problem is so bad that a slight majority of professionals surveyed noted that their organizations didn’t even have enough information to prioritize vulnerabilities.
With so much on their plates already, IT professionals need an updating system that automates as much as possible and overcomes the challenges of the remote setup. Faronics Deploy fits the bill.
How Faronics can help
At Faronics, we offer a suite of solutions with visibility and endpoint management in mind. Our application management solution, Faronics Deploy has the right mix of accessibility and capabilities to make visibility possible — even as teams continue to work from home. Onboarding is easy, taking mere minutes for each device and built with remote control in mind. Working from anywhere, IT professionals can use Deploy to install, uninstall and update applications. The solution also makes it easy to create presets and automate major parts of the deployment process, allowing them to set priorities and focus on pressing issues, rather than regular updates.
Of course, even with improved visibility, attacks still occur. Deep Freeze, Faronics’ patented reboot-to-restore technology, allows you to freeze your endpoints to the desired state and restore from unexpected changes with a simple reboot. Users can instantly restart their device to your IT team’s default configuration, removing any unwanted software or third-party changes. This technology can be deployed on remote workstations with just the click of a button.
Ultimately, organizations need a setup that offers them control of the applications on a mix of endpoints and the ability to continually perform updates on those applications. Faronics Deploy offers users the capability to do just that. It’s truly next-generation computer management software.
To learn more, explore our products online or sign up for a free trial today.
