Integrate VDI into your BCP to securely enable work from home

VDI enables a robust BCP that gets an organization and its businesses quickly on its feet. Critical business functions like customer facing, reps handling customer calls, finance, HR need not go into a recovery mode at all and remain operational anytime anywhere everytime.

Micro-blogging giant Twitter has asked over 5,000 of its employees in different parts of the globe to work from home, in the wake of corona virus pandemic that has already infected over 90,000 people and claimed over 3,200 lives across 70 countries.

While Twitter is well-equipped to take this preventive measure in its attempt to deal with the risk perceptions without compromising with its business activities, not many organizations are prepared for emergencies like this. Even if some organizations are willing to allow their employees to work from the safety of their homes, they do not have the required infrastructure and systems in place to ensure that enterprise resources and business operations are not undermined due to security risks.

Need for A Robust Business Continuity Plan

The fast-spreading pandemic triggered by COVID-19 underlines the need for a resilient and pandemic-ready Business Continuity Plan (BCP). An all-weather BCP not only aids recovery in the aftermath of an emergency, but also protects company personnel and assets, and enables companies to function smoothly even during a disaster or crisis.

Under the prevailing circumstances, too, a robust BCP is crucial for two reasons: employees may face difficulty in getting into the office if quarantines are imposed, and some people may have to take care of their family or relatives suspected to have infected by the deadly virus. In either of the situations, a company faces the risk of productivity loss and competitive advantage, without a well-defined BCP and lack of proper infrastructure.

Protect Employees, Safeguard Business Interests

It’s time that organizations took proactive measures and started setting up infrastructure so that their work force could securely work from anywhere, anytime and keep their productivity level up to the mark. And it’s not only for people who get infected by COVID-19 or, for that matter, face any other health hazard.

As a preventive measure, organizations could take steps to divide their workforce into multiple teams, asking them to work from different locations and at different times. While one of the teams can work from home, the other can work in office, without meeting each other. Such an arrangement can protect teams in critical business functions, such as customer facing functions, reps handling customer calls, accounts, finance, back office operations, during such pandemic-like situations.

Using VDI as part of BCP

Employees working away from office need instant access in a Zero Trust environment to enterprise data, business applications, and communication & collaboration capabilities to stay productive. But the IT team faces the challenge of providing compliant, ready to use, secure remote access to business apps to end-users working on personal or company-issued laptops. Companies, which come within the purview of various regulatory frameworks, especially in BPO, KPO, BFSI, healthcare, pharma and government sectors, need a watertight secure solution to deliver a compliant workspace and access to applications driving business processes to their workforce in case of any emergency.

Organizations should consider Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), an integral part of BCP, to deliver the existing corporate workspace to employees working from home/anywhere. Furthermore companies which have offices in different geographical locations, can use VDI delivered over the cloud to ensure instant access to corporate workspace. VDI solutions, integrated with strong multi-factor authentication and endpoint control features, can allay security concerns, too.

Role of Decision Makers

It becomes paramount responsibility of BCP planning teams get the IT team to put in place systems that not only ensure seamless access to corporate applications but also protect business data from pilferage and breach. Since risk is usually part of CFO’s portfolio, readying a BCP and its execution become part of CFO’s responsibilities, too.

However, the BCP should not just kick in when or after a disaster strikes. It should be part of Business As Usual (BAU) systems, the normal execution of standard functional operations within an organization, so that companies are resilient towards any kind of eventualities and gets up on its feet immediately to execute the BCP for the organization This will ensure that the critical functions don’t get into a recovery mode in the first place. This aspect of BCP will get tested day in and out as people go about doing their BAU roles.

How is your organization/business dealing with the current situation of the pandemic virus and the associated panic? How resilient is your BCP? Have you considered VDI as part of BCP?