Business & Technology
Introducing Linksys HomeWRK for Business | Secured by Fortinet
Linksys HomeWRK for Business | Secured by Fortinet
Today’s organizations are constantly developing new ideas and strategies for improving their business. One of their key objectives is to optimize productivity to deliver the quality of service today’s customers demand. Traditional office spaces were intentionally designed to improve employee productivity and collaboration. But the pandemic lockdown pushed many organizations to switch to a remote-working model almost overnight, throwing business strategies and IT teams into turmoil. And now, even though businesses have begun welcoming workers back to the office, there is no returning to pre-pandemic expectations. Instead, employers and employees alike are looking to adopt a new hybrid-work model to manage overhead, and provide flexibility and a better work-life balance, while maintaining productivity and security.
Employees have maintained that their productivity did not decrease while working from home during the lockdown. And a new study from Stanford supports that, showing that productivity increased 47% YoY in 2020, with most of that gain led by remote workers. This increase in performance was attributed mainly to a more convenient working environment, which led to fewer or shorter breaks and sick days.
However, technology also prevented those productivity gains from being even more remarkable. In the aftermath of the quarantine, many organizations rushed to create temporary fixes and workarounds to enable employees to work remotely. But as a result, those employees also regularly experienced dropped calls or video jitter due to a weak internet signal or devices competing for bandwidth at home. According to a recent survey, 84% of employees working from home expressed that they suffered from an unreliable internet connection. And nearly nine in ten work-from-home employees reported wasting an average of over 30 minutes of work a day due to connection issues.
Secure Connectivity is Key to Employee Productivity
Employee productivity is essential to any business, and poor or slow home internet impacts employees’ performance of their daily tasks. Cybersecurity plays an equally crucial role. When a connection is not safeguarded, the internet can become a playground for criminal activities. Last year, FortiGuard Labs researchers found that cybercriminals quickly transitioned their attack strategies to target at-home workers and their often undersecured networks. Exploits targeting consumer-grade devices and unpatched systems rapidly replaced traditional network-centric attacks as criminals sought to compromise home devices. Ransomware also increased over 1070% during the past year, with several high-profile attacks originating with remote workers. As a result, based on the latest Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average cost of data breaches in 2021 has reached $4.24 million per incident, with nearly 20% of organizations reporting that remote work played a factor in a data breach.
Today’s IT teams still face heavy workloads to enable their workforce to work effectively at home while protecting their corporate network and devices from security threats. And not just from external threats but from malware and phishing attacks that are introduced by home networks. They need a permanent, enterprise-grade solution designed to solve this problem.
Enter Linksys HomeWRK for Business - Secured by Fortinet
Combining their respective expertise in security and connectivity, Fortinet and Linksys have partnered to deliver a new enterprise networking solution. It is designed to improve productivity, optimize user experience, and maintain enterprise-grade security for employees working from home.
Linksys HomeWRK is a next-generation router and firewall designed to deliver a safe and fast network connection for corporate and personal needs in one integrated unit. Featuring the latest Wi-Fi 6 with mesh technologies, Linksys HomeWRK for Business | Secured by Fortinet enables organizations to provide their work-from-home employees with reliable connectivity, prioritized for corporate communications and collaboration tools. And it provides IT with visibility across all devices connected to the corporate network through a flexible, cloud-based management console.
- A two-in-one solution. Linksys HomeWRK allows corporations to turn home networks into enterprise-ready work environments. It enables IT teams to create a secure networking domain within the home network, with its own SSID and protocols, that can be remotely configured and managed while allowing home users to maintain and fully control their personal—and private—home network.
- Enterprise-grade network security for home offices. Linksys HomeWRK for Business | Secured by Fortinet provides enterprise-grade security from Fortinet for the corporate domain and separate, local protection for their home network. It enables secure remote access to the corporate network for remote workers along with advanced antivirus, web filtering, intrusion prevention, app control, botnet control, and IPSec VPN access. Work-from-home employees can enjoy the same security at home that they do on-premises to protect sensitive corporate information from cyberattacks, all without compromising their privacy, protection, or control on their home network.
- Fast mesh Wi-Fi for corporate and home networks. Built with the latest Wi-Fi 6 tri-band technology, the solution delivers a high-performance corporate and personal network connection for employees at home through a single device. Employees get a blanket of Wi-Fi coverage and seamless roaming, while broad coverage, bandwidth optimization, and QoS ensure they can do this without a weak signal or dead spots.
- Centralized management in real-time. A single management console delivers real-time visibility to enable IT teams to centrally monitor the performance of all devices connected to the corporate network, anywhere, anytime. Zero-touch provisioning streamlines employee onboarding with simple plug-and-connect devices, requiring no complicated wiring for deployment.
- Optimized for employee collaboration. Linksys HomeWRK for Business | Secured by Fortinet is designed to give users quality online meeting experiences at home, with bandwidth prioritized for collaboration tools like Zoom. Employees can enjoy clear communication with colleagues, customers, and partners for better work performance, team collaboration, and customer satisfaction.
- Protect personal privacy. The solution supports multiple networks for separate personal use. Employees enjoy complete ownership and confidentiality of their personal and guest networks, allowing household members to enjoy secure and fast connections for non-corporate devices. Corporate IT has no visibility or access to an employee’s private network activities, devices, or connected resources.
- Affordable Hardware-as-a-Service. Linksys HomeWRK’s affordable subscriptions eliminate upfront investment and require very little maintenance and updating by IT staff. The solution is scalable, and new users are easy to add as business grows.
Organizations are adopting a new hybrid-working model to provide the flexibility that today’s workforce demands along with the productivity businesses require to compete in today’s digital marketplace. The Linksys HomeWRK for Business | Secured by Fortinet solution helps companies create a safe digital workspace with enterprise-class network security for their work-from-home employees. Zero-touch provisioning makes it easy to set up and manage, providing your remote workforce with secure remote access to all the resources they need to get their jobs done, without sacrificing the privacy and availability they demand in their home network.
Contact your Fortinet or Linksys sales representative or visit https://www.fortinet.com/products/secure-home-network for more details or to request a trial.
