Remote work is nothing new. In fact, it might be one of the most dominant phrases in 2020's word cloud. The good news is that with the right technology in place, remote work can deliver benefits across your organization.

Cloud-delivered solutions enable remote workers to remain productive, efficient, and secure -even from the couch. All while helping drive down costs. And with the tips below, you can get even more out of your remote work experience.

Secure your remote workspaces

The three most important words in real estate are location, location, location. In remote work, they're security, security, security.

The FBI has seen a 300 percent -yes 300 percent -increase in cybercrime since the start of COVID-19. With multiple sites to protect, and employees using home networks and personal devices, remote work opens you up to increased risk. You need to give your remote employees and your business the confidence to collaborate safely with security solutions that:

• Offer built-in encryption
• Ensure secure endpoint access for any device in your network
• Protect sensitive data with robust identity verification for users and devices
• Allow employees to communicate and share files securely
• Defend against threats with cloud-delivered security

Keep collaboration simple

Login issues, dropped connections, poor audio quality, and other issues like blurry video can affect your team's ability to work together. Give your employees access to reliable, high-quality voice, video, and messaging in a single solution. Choose collaboration technology that allows employees to:

• Seamlessly communicate and collaborate across devices
• Share messages and files quickly 1:1 or with a whole team
• Quickly find conversations and documents
• Brainstorm using a digital whiteboard
• Integrate with the apps they use every day
• Record meetings and get automatic transcripts

Reduce IT complexity

IT should work for you, not vice versa. Make sure your collaboration technology helps you maximize your time while minimizing your IT hassles. To that end, look for simplified solutions that:

• Effortlessly integrate virtual meetings, calling, WiFi, and security
• Can easily be deployed and managed by employees who might not have IT skills
• Scale with you as your business needs change

Cisco Designed Secure Remote Work  

Fortunately, you don't have to look far to find the right work from anywhere technology. At Cisco, our small business portfolio includes the collaboration and security solutions you need to simplify, secure, and support your remote work environments. With Cisco Designed Secure Remote Work, you get everything your business needs to deliver an exceptional remote work experience.

• Cisco Webex^?:Make it easy for your remote teams to meet, securely share messages and files, search for information, private message, group chat, brainstorm, and work together efficiently.
• Cisco Secure Access by Duo:Protect your remote workers' sensitive data with robust two-factor security that verifies the identity of users, devices, and applications attempting to access your data.
• Cisco Umbrella^TM: Protect remote users wherever they're working with flexible, fast, and effective front-line security by blocking malicious destinations before a connection is established.
• Cisco Cloud Mailbox Defense:Scan all your email, internal and external, without difficult technical challenges or interrupting the regular delivery of messages from the cloud while detecting and blocking threats.

Let's get to work

Our current remote work experiences look like they're here to stay at least for the near future. Maximizing your technology to ensure that you're collaborating securely and efficiently will help drive benefits for business and your teams, no matter where they're located. Read more about Cisco Designed Secure Remote Work, and let's get to work.