Page 19 - Campus Technology, March/April 2020

This is the time to take out your policy and procedures documentation, recommunicate it to your users and have strict guidelines on use of equipment, software and systems for your remote workforce.
should be a concern for every organization today to keep online resources safe. Those organizations with major ERP cloud-based systems should monitor and stay in close contact with their service providers to ensure steps are taken to protect your data and privacy, especially during this time of crisis. Dust off those service-level agreements (SLAs) and ask to see up-to-date data privacy and business continuity plans from your solution providers to make sure they have a course of action in case of reduced technical and support staff levels due to illness.
Increased Loads on Crucial Systems
One of the most prevalent questions that I am hearing is: Will my on-premise systems handle the full load of our remote workforce as well as all of our students? One example is educational institutions with open source and on-site learning management software. These types of systems will be seeing the most concurrent use traffic. Others are asking if their cloud- based environment is robust and scalable enough to handle the massive concurrent loads of 100 percent remote use. Some companies (for instance, D2L) are offering what they call a “Quick Start Care Package” for K-12 and higher education institutions that have limited or no learning management systems. This type of outreach is a real community effort that will help so many
schools in crisis. Moving resources to cloud- based systems will give institutions more scalability in quickly serving the needs in this historic shift in our workforce and student populations.
Enormous Risks to ERP Operations
Many large and small institutions have on-site ERP and other administrative systems. While there are many threats to administrative systems that I’ve outlined previously, there is no greater risk than your own people. While there are controls within the workplace to guard against internal and external security and privacy risks, the remote workplace for many organizations is the Wild West. Threats from software viruses, phishing schemes, software conflicts, unauthorized access, confidential file storage on local drives and the ever-present challenge of “my child needed to print their assignment from my computer” are the things that keep IT professionals and leadership up at night. This is the time to take out your policy and procedures documentation, recommunicate it to your users and have strict guidelines on use of equipment, software and systems for your remote workforce. If you are one of the many institutions that do not have one, start one now! Having clear guidelines and expectations for remote workers and students may be the difference between a safe and smooth transition to remote work and a monumental and public data breach.
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