Logicalis US Offers Five Ways to Know if Your Unified Access Policy is Up To Par

NEW YORK, Aug. 5, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Work is no longer a place; it's an activity.  Workers expect anytime, anywhere access to the workplace using the devices and applications they know and trust for voice, video and messaging.  When customers and partners visit your company's workplace and log onto your network, the ability to manage all the various devices and information becomes exponentially more difficult.  That's why a solid, singular unified access policy is critical, but how do IT pros know whether the steps they've taken are enough? To help, Logicalis US, an international IT solutions and managed services provider (www.us.logicalis.com), has outlined five ways to know if you have a solid unified access policy and management plan in place.

"Today, companies often have differing wired and wireless, remote access and VPN environments, all with disparate policies," says Mike Johnson, Director, Communication and Collaboration Solutions, Logicalis US.  "With people working one day in the office and another from home or on the road, it's difficult to create the right user experience without tying it all together, integrating it under just one system.  A singular unified access policy and management plan is the foundation that creates the user experience, and to maintain control, the administration capabilities absolutely must be on one platform."

Five Clues that Your Access Policy is Solid

1. The Power of One: You have a single, unified system and one management platform that can provide consistent enforcement for all of the resources across your wired, wireless and remote access VPN networks.
2. Need to Know: You're providing access based on need, and nothing more, and you take into account the type of end point being used for access: A secure corporate laptop, for example, has different access capabilities than an Apple iPad even if both are authenticated using the same credentials.
3. ID Matters: Guests on your network are never anonymous, something which is a common and often underestimated mistake in many other companies' unified access policies.  A guest sponsor portal allows authorized staff to create predefined temporary access, but you know that if those users were anonymous, you would no longer be in control of them and what they are accessing.
4. Put it in Writing: You have an established, written unified access policy with a secure access matrix that defines classes (user types), objects (machines), resources (CRM, email systems) and roles (sales, marketing, finance, etc.).
5. Why to Wi-Fi: Nearly half of global mobile data traffic is expected to be offloaded to fixed broadband like Wi-Fi by 2017, so you have made your Wi-Fi deployment robust and a critical component of your company's mobile strategy, affording it the same level of care you do your network.  With enough planning, it may even be possible to monetize your Wi-Fi in the future, using it to market to the people accessing it as mobile data traffic becomes more prevalent.

Want to Learn More?

•  Find out how to prepare your network, security and policies for a BYOD influx; watch a short video, "Moving from Mobile-First to Mobile-Only," here: http://www.ict-log.us/zGSh7.
• Learn about a Logicalis tool that can help CIOs gauge communication and collaboration readiness: http://www.ict-log.us/zGSiL.
• Listen as Logicalis communication and collaboration expert Mike Johnson discusses unified communications in this WatchIT video: http://www.ict-log.us/zGSqt.

About Logicalis

Logicalis is an international IT solutions and managed services provider with a breadth of knowledge and expertise in communications and collaboration, data center and cloud services, and managed services.

Logicalis employs nearly 3,700 people worldwide, including highly trained service specialists who design, specify, deploy and manage complex ICT infrastructures to meet the needs of almost 6,000 corporate and public sector customers.  To achieve this, Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with technology leaders such as Cisco, HP, IBM, CA Technologies, EMC, NetApp, Microsoft, VMware and ServiceNow.

The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of $1.6 billion, from operations in Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific, and is fast establishing itself as one of the leading IT and Communications solution integrators specializing in the areas of advanced technologies and services.

The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec Limited, listed on the Johannesburg and London AIM Stock Exchanges, with revenues of over $5 billion.

For more information, visit www.us.logicalis.com.

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Media contacts:
Lisa Dreher, VP, Marketing & Business Development, Logicalis US
[email protected]
425-201-8111
www.us.logicalis.com

Karen Franse, Communication Strategy Group for Logicalis US
[email protected]
866-997-2424
www.gocsg.com

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SOURCE Logicalis US