Responding to network challenges

We’ve seen clients making major efforts to adapt their organizations to face current challenges, including a shift to enable a larger remote workforce.

This shift has placed significant bandwidth demands on many organizations’ networks — and increased pressure on IT decision makers, who even prior to this surge of remote work were under stress to keep their networks running smoothly 24/7/365. In a survey commissioned in 2019, 80 percent of IT decision makers indicated network performance and availability kept them awake at night. 

However, increased bandwidth demand is not the only challenge facing IT decision makers as more employees work remotely. Today’s current environment has also increased network security threats and prompted IT teams to put even more energy towards virtual private networks (VPNs), firewalls and other defenses to protect data and thwart cybercriminals.

Here’s how we’re helping businesses respond to these familiar challenges that require renewed focus.

Scalable solutions

As citizens hunker down and follow shelter-in-place orders, businesses are deploying more remote working solutions and relying much more heavily on cloud-based collaboration tools. There has also been a large increase in virtual call centers as many businesses work to continue servicing customers while protecting the health and well-being of their employees.

Scalable technology solutions that allow companies to increase bandwidth as needed to meet their evolving needs help ensure high network availability and optimal network performance. Many of our clients are enabling their employees to work remotely with the help of our scalable connectivity solutions, which include Dedicated Fiber Internet (DFI), Ethernet and Unified Communications.

Security threats

Working from home introduces many security risks as more vulnerable devices connect to businesses’ networks, increasing the number of opportunities for cybercriminals. They’ve turned to familiar — but effective — attacks such as malware, phishing, and more.

Though numerous organizations have network security protocols and systems in place, we’ve seen our clients use more caution to mitigate the risks involved in connecting remotely. We help organizations respond with our security solutions, which allow data to remain secure remotely using site-to-site and VPN connections, safeguard networks with a reliable firewall to help identify and block Internet threats, and more.

Helping you respond is our responsibility

Helping you respond to new challenges in a frequently changing business landscape is our responsibility. Learn more about our response.