SECURE CONNECTIVITY FOR REMOTE WORKERS

Last week, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, MACH Networks asked all our employees to work from home to support the need for social distancing.  As a wireless telecommunications company, we were well equipped to do so, but it wasn’t without its own set of challenges. While most of us have laptops and home Internet, there were concerns about maintaining security and manageability. For those employees with families quarantined at home, trying to do schoolwork and entertain themselves on the same Internet connection, they faced special challenges around bandwidth demand. Many of our customers are dealing with this same situation and have asked us how they can use their fully managed LTE connectivity solutions to support remote workers. Here is a short list of best practices. 

1. To simplify security, consider putting all traffic on a VPN from the router to your company’s data center and funneling that traffic through security services in the data center. This will provide the necessary connectivity while maintaining consistency with existing in-office policies. This is especially important if using the remote device doesn’t support threat protection or content filtering on the router.  It is also possible to build a Wi-Fi policy that can limit which MAC addresses can connect to a given SSID. This can be used to limit access to the LTE router to only corporate assets such as company laptops or phones.    
                       
2. Consider using Private Network Services. MACH Networks operates a Private Network Service which prevents things like Denial of Service attacks as well as Content filtering which can block sites like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, and more. This can help prevent excessive overage charges or malware or viruses from being installed on company assets.  
   
   
3. For small deployments with fewer than 50 locations, MACH also offers an Auto VPN solution that allows for a very fast setup of secure connectivity between the remote worker and corporate networks. If you just want to provide higher reliability for your at-home network, you can plug the LTE router into a DSL or cable router to be used for primary connectivity, with the wireless link used for failover mode. 

Nobody knows how long this new normal will last, but if you are looking for a secure LTE network connectivity for remote workers, give us a call.  From our homes to yours, stay home, stay connected, and stay secure.