04 August 2020

By Ian Wilcox, public sector strategist, MLL Telecom

Many organisations already have flexible and mobile working policies. The Covid-driven lockdown, perhaps unwittingly, has provided the opportunity to test them further. Councils are a good example and they will now be closely evaluating further potential cost saving and productivity benefits by rolling out flexible working on a much larger scale. This is also the time for IT departments to be reviewing their network architecture for most effectively supporting such strategies.

A key consideration is the scaling of solutions across the entire organisation on a permanent rather than temporary basis. Every home worker and every flexible/drop in office will need the bandwidth, quality of service and resilience necessary to perform their respective roles. A broadband connection with no guaranteed SLA may be adequate to access information and systems from home. But for roles that involve interacting with the public, such as contact centre agents and social workers, access to phone, videoconferencing and information and systems will be essential. Jitter, latency and poor sound or picture quality won’t be acceptable. Therefore to guarantee quality and high availability, FTTC should be seen as adequate as a primary for a home worker and probably a small office, until such time FTTP and 5G are widely accessible.

Fortunately, fit-for-purpose WAN, voice, data, Internet and Cloud access solutions for covering many requirements are readily available. However, ensuring their full potential and resilience is intrinsically linked to an optimised network infrastructure.
Trusted architecture

Exactly how much trust can be placed on the network depends on its architecture. To support the ‘new normal’ way of working IT must seriously contemplate radically redesigning the network taking into consideration policies on hosting, business continuity, “Internet first”, and security. Fundamental decisions will also need to be taken on whether the network should be an Internet, MPLS or SDWAN architecture.

If the cost benefit analysis justifies it, then SDWAN could be the best approach, particularly the ease of management and configuration change. However, creating a network as an extension of the Internet may be simpler to manage if the network is being shared. But there would need to be a transition plan to move away from any existing MPLS architecture as most shared networks use MPLS as a trusted method of separating user communities. Any transition to a new architecture could therefore be complex but it is possible to have a hybrid solution bearing in mind organisations move at different speeds.

 Finally, there are the security implications. Location and management of firewalls are an expensive part of the infrastructure and their number and location will be an important component of the financial modelling. Different network architectures will also come with different business continuity risks - the cost of mitigating these is important. For example, applications hosted in a virtual cloud and accessed via the Internet provide a high level of resilience in the event of physical damage to equipment and circuits. However, private circuits and equipment directly protected by firewalls is more secure against cyber threats.

Don’t overlook that searching for vulnerable home user devices is likely to become the most common point of attack for hackers looking to harvest data. A computer at home connected via Internet Broadband introduces risks that do not exist with workstations in corporate offices. Weaker firewalls, direct Internet access and user error such as making it visible to other devices on a home network make the device more vulnerable to attack. VPNs and data encryption can mitigate the risk.
To summarise, working practices will not return to the way they were before lockdown. An organisation’s IT infrastructure must now be designed to deliver the architecture that provides the best value solutions for empowering increasingly mobile workforces, while ensuring the required quality, performance and security.

By Ian Wilcox, public sector strategist, MLL Telecom