The COVID-19 pandemic results in people working more and more in home office. After adapting to sudden remote work using available devices at home, many organizations are beginning to allow corporate PCs and laptops to be taken home to work remotely. Millions of these PCs are currently being managed using on-premises tools. When these devices are no longer on-premises and are not expected to “check in” to the corporate network for weeks, how do you ensure control over such devices?
For whom is this article of interest?
This article will help IT decision makers and system administrators who currently manage a mostly on-premises PC management infrastructure. It will help them prepare the PCs for cloud management before they are sent home. You’ll see how to apply automation and intelligence with XEOX in cloud to your existing infrastructure.
This is not meant to be an complete guide. However it will help you enable devices in a consistent and unified way, irrespective of their physical location.
Using XEOX? Enable support for remote workers with co-management
The global health crisis has made many businesses look for ‘easy wins’ in the cloud to complement their existing device management infrastructure. XEOX and WUINSTALL are now a part of a single solution called XEOX RMM . With XEOX RMM, organizations that are currently using on-premises tools like Microsoft Configuration Manager/Microsoft WSUS, are able to use XEOX RMM cloud services to co-manage Windows 10 device with just 1 Euro per device/per month. Co-management may be an attractive technology for devices managed by Configuration Manager/WSUS that will no longer be on-premises and are not expected to “check in” to the corporate network for weeks.
Paths to co-management with Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Benefits of adding cloud management with XEOX right away
This approach has several benefits for your organization beyond helping manage the additional demands on IT due to Coronavirus response.
Firstly, XEOX cloud services adds the ability for you to remote manage devices. You will be able to concurrently manage them from on-premises like Configuration Manager/WSUS servers. You may choose to stay in co-management for as long as you want and still gain intelligence from the Microsoft 365 cloud to your day-to-day work. For example:
- deploy updates faster so that you can make your organization more secure and compliant
- patch devices in home office directly to Microsoft/Windows Update while patching inhouse device by using an internal WSUS server
- completely automate your compatibility testing when upgrading to a new release of Windows
- take immediate actions on all your devices from a unified web console – whether managed on-premises or natively in the cloud
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is another vital consideration when devices roam outside the physical corporate boundary. With co-management, you gain the important benefit of XEOX Agent for PCs. To secure co-managed remote work devices, we recommend enabling the XEOX Agent right away. The XEOX Agent is a small service that will be installed on Windows Client and Servers. XEOX Agent also exists for Unix/Mac.
Additionally, the XEOX Admin Portal provides a simple way to manage on-premise clients. You can manage traditional clients that roam out of your physical location without additional on-premises infrastructure. You also don’t need to expose your on-premises infrastructure to the internet. XEOX will set you up with a robust long-term remote work infrastructure.
Several reputed cybersecurity agencies (for example, NCSC in UK, CISA in US, and ASD in Australia) have recommended MDM tools. They are useful for setting up devices with a standard configuration, and also to remotely lock devices, erase data, or retrieve a backup. With XEOX once you push out the XEOX agent, you have a single policy authoring console to standardize your security policies, device configurations, and app settings across all your endpoints. Our security experts recommended applying a known group of settings and default values when using powerful tools Patch Level Reports, Antivirus Cockpits. You are able to easily push out Software packages also to devices outside company network. XEOX is also ideal for deploying Windows updates during predefined time windows. This is important for machines serving critical services.
Next steps
If you are a customer that is not using on-premise management software at all, moving straight to XEOX will greatly increase your ability to manage remote devices during this crisis. If you are using on-premise Tools like Microsoft Configuration Manager/WSUS, this is the right time to take action and use the combined power of cloud insights with XEOX to keep business data safe while helping people keep working productively from home.
Many customers take their first steps with a free XEOX 30 trial, a unique service designed with one goal in mind: helping you get the most value out of XEOX by testing all feature for free. Use the XEOX support to work with our specialists to assess, remediate, enable, and drive user satisfaction with your XEOX roll-out. You can get help through the XEOX product page (https://www.xeox.com).
Some other guidance in this series to help you rapidly enable secure remote work:
Get more info on XEOX patch management
Agent Rollout via Active Directory Policy
Fast and Easy Software Distribution for all your Devices
Follow @xeoxRMM on Twitter
