Secure Remote Access Solutions for Small and Medium Businesses

Unintended cyber events are focusing more on remote workers. Many home networks lack basic security, which is often the first line of defense. There is also a rise in phishing issues and credential theft geared to home email addresses which can impact an employee’s device. This puts the sensitive information that many remote workers are accessing on home networks at risk, including critical corporate data and sensitive financial information.

A cloud-based virtual workstation is a way to host your local desktop in the cloud. Virtual workstations on AWS using Amazon EC2 with GPUs are a great fit for studios, creative departments and freelancers that require high-performance graphics workstations for visual effects, animation, or video editing. Virtual workstations can be used anywhere by artists and editors, without performance constraints.

In the past, when remote employees were working outside of the office, they would use a remote access VPN to securely access applications, data, or files that were needed from corporate servers housed on-site. Many businesses are opting to move away from traditional on-premises IT services in favor of the cloud. Because of this, there is less need for remote workers to connect back to a physical office since their applications are residing in the cloud. AWS Client VPN is a cloud VPN that enables your remote employees to securely access AWS cloud resources, as well as any resources in your on-premises network. As an added benefit, with a cloud VPN, resources are placed closer to your remote workers which provides better performance, leading to increased productivity.

A virtual contact center enables employees to work from any location, and since there is no need for office space or equipment, can reduce capital expenses and scale easily. With flexibility for agents to work in locations of their choice, virtual contact centers help reduce employee turnover rates, which is a common problem with contact center staffing. With Amazon Connect, you can setup a virtual contact center in a few steps. Remote agents can handle all customers from a single interface. For example, they can chat with customers and create or respond to tasks as they are routed to them.

Virtual cloud desktops create an entire working environment for a remote employee, whereas application streaming focuses on delivering a single application. Amazon WorkSpaces is a managed, secure cloud desktop service that provides your workers with a full desktop experience with access to documents, applications, and other resources from any supported device, anywhere.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed application streaming service that provides users with instant access to their desktop applications from anywhere on the device of their choice, with a responsive, fluid user experience from anywhere.