ECQ Success Stories: CT Link Managed Services Remotely Secures Client’s WFH setup

ECQ Success Stories: CT Link Managed Services Remotely Secures Client’s WFH setup

With the suddenness of the declaration of the ECQ, most companies were unable to give their workforce the tools that they may have needed to work effectively at home. This left many employees to find their own ways to complete the tasks that they do on a daily basis at home. Many of which ended up using their own devices and installing the apps from work or apps and connecting to thru the company VPN.

Client Challenges: Unsecured Personal Devices connecting to Corporate VPN

One of our customers from the Public Sector encountered this dilemma during the start of the ECQ. They have about 500 employees who need to Work From Home (WFH). They were unable to give all employees resources in which to accomplish their tasks so opted to allow employees to use their personal devices. However, the Infosec Team is concerned that malwares from the personal devices could enter thru the VPN connections.

Solution: CT Link Managed Endpoint Security

As a CT Link managed service customer, we deployed Trend Micro’s Worry-Free Business Security Services (WFBSS), which is a cloud-based Endpoint Security Solution. We provided the link for installing of Trend Micro Agents to end users and assisted them in deploying this on their endpoint devices.

As a cloud-based solution, we were able to be with them every step of the way during this process and helped with problems that occurred during installation of some devices while also monitoring the threats found by WFBSS. This has proved as an effective measure for them as presently WFBSS has detected over 3,000 suspicious and malicious activities from the endpoints.

Security as a Service

Having Managed Services for security helped our client worry less about the security from personal devices connecting into their network and freed up their time to concentrate on other important tasks at hand during the ECQ. This meant that we handled the troubleshooting of the installations of the endpoint devices and monitoring of malicious activities reported by WFBSS. This service is also not reserved for only enterprise accounts as our services are actually very beneficial as well to small and medium businesses that do not have their own dedicated IT team.  Below are a few key features in which you can expect to get when subscribed to our managed services:

  • Keep outside threats like malware from getting in and sensitive data from going out
  • Filtering potentially dangerous or inappropriate websites
  • Preventing phishing and social engineered attacks from getting to your users
  • As a cloud-based solution, support is done remotely
  • Supports WFH setups to ensure your network is safe
  • Ease of deployment with little to no IT skills required
  • Centralized monitoring through one dashboard accessible through the cloud

If you are interested in learning more about our CT Link managed services or WFBSS, contact your CT Link AM or reply to this email and we will get back to you as soon as possible!


Images were provided by Vecteezy (1,2,3,4,5)

ECQ Success Stories: CT Link Managed Services Remotely Sets up Audio Conferencing for Customer Board Meeting

ECQ Success Stories: CT Link Managed Services Remotely Sets up Audio Conferencing for Customer Board Meeting

Right now, there are little to no physical meetings happening due to the need for us to practice social distancing. This has caused a spike into companies looking to put their meetings in the virtual space where they can be safely conducted. To others, however, video conferencing is not feasible for various reasons.  One of our clients fell under one of those reasons.

Customer Challenge

With the extension of the ECQ, our client would not be able to carry out their scheduled board meeting at their office.  This meant that they needed to find an alternate way to carry out the meeting which was scheduled in four days. One consideration they had was to use Microsoft Teams video conferencing capabilities. However, the attendees were not tech savvy individuals and asked their team if it was possible to join the board meeting using landlines.

Our Solution: Set up Audio Conferencing on Microsoft Teams

As they are currently a CT Link Managed Services customer for Office 365, our team set up an audio-conferencing facility using our own tenant to let them try and see if this met their needs.

Within a few hours, the environment was ready and a dedicated bridging number was provided.  Our engineer taught the customer how to use the Audio Conferencing facility. They tested the facility the following day and confirmed that is what they needed, especially because it is easy for non-tech savvy individuals to connect. They only had to dial the bridging number on their landline phones and provide a conference ID for them to join the conference. With this, we recommended the most cost-effective subscription that needs to be added to their Office 365 tenant.

Upon confirmation by the customer on the availment of the additional subscription, the Audio Conferencing was set up in their Office 365 tenant. The board meeting was scheduled and was held using the Microsoft Teams Audio Conferencing Facility. A CT Link engineer was on standby on the day of the meeting to assist with any connection issues.

Audio vs Video

Although video conferencing is now steadily growing in popularity, audio conferencing still has many advantages over its video counterpart. One would be what our client encountered, it is easier for users to connect to and can hold more participants (up to 250 concurrent users).  It is as simple as dialing the number to the join the conference. 

Audio conferencing is also more viable to those who have limited access to the internet, whether it be due to remote locations where connectivity is limited or if the user is currently roaming. Quality of audio is also much better when done through audio conferencing, so if your meeting requires no video aspect, it is usually much better to hold it as an audio conference.

Microsoft Makes Teams Available for Everyone in Light of Covid-19

With the flexibility of Microsoft Teams, there are many ways to collaborate with your colleagues remotely during the ECQ. We have been working closely with many of our clients during the ECQ to set up their Microsoft Teams’ journey remotely. Whether their interest be in a free messaging app, a better tool to share documents, or even to set up video conferences, it has been helping many of our clients improve their operations and productivity.

If you would like to learn more about Microsoft Teams or if you would like to try it for yourself for free, please get in touch with your CT Link account manager or you can send an email to sales@www.ctlink.com.ph / marketing@www.ctlink.com.ph and we would be happy to help you!


Images were provided by FreePik (1, 2, 3, 4) and Vecteezy (1, 2, 3, 4)

ECQ Success Stories: CT Link Managed Services restores Client’s Web Services from Failed Physical Server

ECQ Success Stories: CT Link Managed Services restores Client’s Web Services from Failed Physical Server

Disruption to your business can happen without any notice. This was felt by everyone when the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) was suddenly implemented last March 2020. Companies were forced to adopt a Work From Home program where servers are expected to be always available even when unattended.

Client Challenge

A couple of days into the ECQ, one of CT Link’s customer’s web server became inaccessible. The server hosts the web portal of the company, which runs on a physical server. They have an appliance deployed on-site to back up some of the customer’s servers which are replicated to a private cloud to serve as a Disaster Recovery (DR) site. However, despite no one is in their Data Center, they must bring the web portal back up running as soon as possible, without anyone going on-site.

Our Solution: CT Link’s Managed DR as a Service

With a subscription to CT Link’s Managed DR as a Service, a teleworking CT Link Engineer was assigned to the case after the customer contacted CT Link Customer Service. By accessing the BCDR Orchestrator, a working backup from the previous night was identified. However, with the physical server not accessible remotely, how can the back-up be restored to the original server?

CT Link’s Managed DR as a Service used a two-part solution:

Restore Even Before Repairing via Local Virtualization

The on-prem appliance being used for CT Link’s Managed DR as a Service has a capability called local virtualization which allows the appliance to host virtual machines restored from the backups. This feature was used to restore the most recent backup of the web portal into the appliance. This enabled the web portal to be accessible to users once again. The web portal was hosted on the backup appliance for 4 weeks until the systems administrator was able to visit the Data Center.

Easily Move Over to a New Physical Server via Bare Metal Restoration (BMR)

Once the systems administrator was able to replace the physical server, the web portal had to be moved back from the backup appliance into the physical server. Manually reinstalling the operating system, installing the web server software and patching and hardening the server would take a couple of days.

Instead of reinstalling the operating environment, CT Link engineer used the Bare Metal Restoration technique to quickly restore from the backup appliance into the new server. Bare Metal Restoration removes the need to reinstall the OS or applications prior to restoration, making the transition smooth and easy.

Commendation

Customer sent a commendation to the engineer assigned to their case, for having their web portal back up running and accessible in just two hours after contact. Having seen the benefits of CT Link’s Managed DR as a Service, the customer is now considering enrolling more servers into this service.

Keeping BCDR in mind

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans are investments into keeping your operations running. Our client experienced this first hand, having faced two disruptions simultaneously from the ECQ and having their server go down when no one could service it physically. However, they came out of this ordeal with minimal downtime, reaping the benefits of their investments.

If you are interested in learning more about CT Link Managed Services, you may email us at sales@www.ctlink.com.ph / marketing@www.ctlink.com.ph.


Images were provided by Vecteezy and Freepik