Your COVID-19 Impact Self Assessment


This quick survey will shine a light on the current state of your preparation for the fallout of such a global health crisis and show you the steps to resolve any issues discovered.

Remote Work Readiness

The score shows how well the organization is prepared for working remotely. The first part is the readiness of the Remote Work infrastructure such as home computers and networks, the second part is the available applications to perform high-quality remote work.

Home Computers and networks are ready for the remote work for all employees

Yes

Remote Office Infrastructure Development

Problem:

As companies grow and develop, different types of computers with different specifications from different vendors get onto the remote network. Some of these were never business class - no native encryption, sufficient processing power, or SSD, an supported operating system or expired warranty. This backfires in two critical ways. First, the low-performance computers don't allow users to work effectively, and secondly, the management of these devices means notably higher support resources.

Benefits:

Applying a policy to define a golden standard of endpoint requirements for all remote work locations can boost an employee's productivity through updating devices while driving down support costs at the same time.

Remote Work Applications are ready to perform high-quality remote work.

Yes

Remote Work Application Implementation and Deployment


Problem:

As more business processes are being made digital, users need better tools to automate or support their remote work.  Often people work in the office only and not everybody has the complete stack of applications ready to work efficiently in a remote environment.  Even they have the stack in their office computers, the majority of applications are not get installed or updated to home computers. That increases the time that is needed to get remote immediately during a crisis situation.

Benefits:

The Remote Work Application Implementation and Deployment service provide process and protocols for provisioning applications, performing functional tests, troubleshooting, migration of data, setup and debugging of simple integrations, imports, and exports.  It boosts the adoption rate and helps the team overcome technical difficulties. New applications are deployed and implemented through a process based on best practices.

Remote Work Capabilities

The score shows how well the organization is prepared for working remotely. The first part is the culture, best practices, and performance by working remotely. The second part is ensuring all critical aspects of remote work are covered with policies and that employees are trained for them.

Education and Training for Effective Remote Work are available

Yes

Remote Work Education Resources

Problem:

We need to achieve alignment among dozens of employees, service providers, contractors, and third parties to maintain quality work during a crisis and remote work. For this, communication must be open and fast across the "virtual office". In most cases even the organization has the necessary applications in place, the team does not get used to working remotely only and they have no adequate experience with all the applications needed for effective remote work. That leads to an overwhelming volume of new tools, skills, and processes to be adopted in a short amount of time which leads to mistakes, misalignment, and confusion.

Benefit:

Having a remote work skill development and an education plan can open up opportunities for a faster response during a crisis. The executives, key users, team, and vendors are working together effectively in a collaborative environment.

A Remote Work Policy is available to govern the regulations and processes around security and data management

No / Not Sure

Remote Work Policy Implementation

Problem:

Effective remote work requires alignment and compliance in the following areas: IT Security, Data Management, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and Remote Work. To meet these information security challenges, some regulated organizations are required to have a governing document. Remote Work Policies are developed and maintained to meet certain internal or outside compliances.

Benefits:

A Remote Work Policy identifies the rules and procedures for all individuals accessing and using an organization's IT assets and resources from a remote location. Effective Remote Work Policy is a unique document for each organization, cultivated from its people’s perspectives on risk tolerance, how they see and value their information, and the availability of that information that they maintain. For this reason, many companies will find a boilerplate Remote Work Policy inappropriate, due to its lack of consideration for how the organization’s people actually use and share information among themselves and with the public.

Network Readiness

The score shows how well the organization's infrastructure is prepared for the demand of the majority of employees working remotely. One aspect is the central internet connection's capacity to be able to handle the increased two-way traffic on the corporate network. The other aspect is ensuring the internal network infrastructure doesn’t have bottlenecks to block the overall performance and reliability.

Internet bandwidth is adequate for the increased traffic

No / Not Sure

Upgrade Primary Internet Service Provider

Problem:

Nobody argues that we cannot have enough network bandwidth. Applications, data and processes are on the cloud and to access them everyone needs high speed, reliable internet connection. It's getting more common to get multiple Internet Service Providers to generate redundancy and performance. Often, however, nobody reviews ISP offerings about different, higher level services available that they've developed.

Benefit:

Upgrading the primary ISP means assessing the market for the best option available at all times, and changing vendors or upgrading to higher level services as needed.

The internal network is ready to manage the increased remote work

No / Not Sure

Implement a Proper Server Solution

Problem:

Servers are essential to any modern company infrastructure. Although the trend is servers going into the cloud, operating physical servers is still sometimes unavoidable. Also, servers involved in co-location in a datacenter or on another premise, we need to make sure the server hardware is managed properly. 

Benefit:

Servers need regular check ups, software maintenance, firmware updates and physical maintenance to stay in good shape. They need uninterrupted power supply and temperature monitoring to make sure they can manage the 365/24/7 operation. Managing the life-cycle of the hardware and vendors is essential for a long life and quick disaster recovery.

Business Continuity Plan

The score shows how well the organization's business can feasibly operate without disruption. One aspect is the readiness of the IT infrastructure to be able to operate. The other is related to the processes, education, awareness and communication capabilities.

The IT Architecture is ready to handle a disaster, fail or relocation

Yes

Implement a Disaster Ready Architecture

Problem:

Today companies are wired with technology like never before.  The benefits are replete - faster communication, more efficient workflow, better collaboration.  The downside is that much of this technology is fragile or susceptible in many ways.  Systems, devices, and networks must work together within evolving environments with changing components.  Failure of any subsystem or the whole ecosystem impacts the performance and continuity of the company. Therefore it’s our duty to identify the business processes and company deliverables most impacted by a potential failure.

Benefit:

A disaster-ready architecture is a need for each company that will need to be work remotely. Strong and offsite backups, hosted line of business applications, standardized hardware and software setups with redundancies are minimum for a disaster ready environment.

There is a Business Continuity Plan in place and people know the process

No / Not Sure

Implement a Disaster Recovery Plan and Audit

Problem:

Today companies are wired with technology like never before.  The benefits are replete - faster communication, more efficient workflow, better collaboration.  The downside is that much of this technology is fragile or susceptible in many ways.  Systems, devices and networks must work together within evolving environments with changing components.  Failure of any subsystem or the whole ecosystem impacts the performance and continuity of the company. Therefore it’s our duty to identify the business processes and company deliverables most impacted by a potential failure.

Benefit:

Everybody can follow a process to get systems back to work quickly in case of disaster.How do you call your vendors if their numbers are in the system that’s down? How do you provide reliable service for your clients if the accounting system is down? How do we communicate with another branch if email is down? Just as you have mandatory fire drills to ensure you escape a building as quickly and safely as possible, and get general workplace health and safety training regularly to keep aware of general safety issues, a Disaster Recovery Plan can help us and our vendors act as quickly as possible to resume business, restore data, and get up and running again. It also helps employees identify risks and security failures, and moreover, be able to substitute manual processes for the failed electronics until the system is back on line. The Audit process reveals the issues and potential problems within the current Disaster Recovery Plan or generates a list for an action plan to create from scratch.

Enhanced Security Measures

The scores how well the organization is ready to work remotely within a secure environment. One aspect is to increase the individual user's security while working from home offices and on not-so-reliable networks. The other aspect is to enhancing the network's security for potential security incidents.

The user security is enhanced for the increased remote work and potential security incidents

Yes

Implement a Proper Video-Based Security Awareness Training Solution

Problem:

The Security Industry has been focused on securing the “Endpoints.” The Security industry views devices as Endpoints. Endpoints are no longer just devices, Endpoints are PEOPLE. Raising the Security Posture means securing the people as seriously as secure their devices. Isn’t it time that we invest in our people as seriously as we invest in technology?

Benefit:

The Video-Based Security Awareness Training Service attacks end user Security Awareness in a different way. Don’t lecture users, let's entertain and educate them by telling stories about real-life security breaches that have happened to real-life companies. Do this using 3-4 minute long animated and gamified episodes written by Hollywood writers, and focus on a teachable moment around a specific type of attack. A new episode is released every 30 days. It’s like “drip marketing” for Security Awareness.

The network security is enhanced for the increased remote work an potential cyber threaths

No / Not Sure

Remediation of Security Audit

Problem:

Audits sometimes show many holes in systems, processes, and policies. They can also result in a tremendous amount of internal tasks and projects to patch those holes, and usually are come on top of the staff's day job, and because of resource constraints get a lower priority. 

Benefits:

The audit remediation project helps ferret out every task and project that has to be done to solve the issues during the audit or assessment. That generates an internal project and that project is managed on a weekly basis until completely solved. This often means extra management and execution effort required.

<p>Your Score is 5 out of 10</p>

50 %

Warning - attention is required


<p>Thank you for completing the COVID-19 IT Impact Self Assessment. We look forward to speaking with you.</p>
<p><br></p><div>Denes Purnhauser</div><div>Demo - Humanize IT</div><div>denes.purnhauser@managedservicesplatform.com</div><p>++14039980665</p>