Cisco Guidelines for Remote Readiness

Business Continuity Practices for Pandemics

Cisco’s Framework for Remote Access

Additional Advice to Home Workers

Business Continuity Practices for Pandemics

The unforeseeable business disruption resulting from a pandemic is a painful reminder of the importance of a Business Continuity Practices (BCP). The COVID-19 pandemic is changing how businesses maintain operations while keeping employees safe and serving customers. Leaders in businesses of all sizes should have a BCP plan and strategy that allows for a seamless transition and should evaluate their connectivity solutions, applications and security measures. Mitigating business impact during a pandemic may require investing in new infrastructure or employee tools.

Cisco® is actively dealing with these issues and putting into place practices to address business continuity in the short and long term. In this eBook, we are sharing Cisco’s recommendations to help other businesses create and implement a remote-worker pandemic business continuity plan. This eBook outlines the network, policy, and employee considerations that should be covered in a BCP.

While it’s intended to serve as an overview for medium and large enterprises, smaller companies will benefit as well. Our intent is to provide an overview of important considerations, a checklist so- to-speak—versus a technical design document. Where possible, we’ve highlighted links to find more information. We are confident that anyone creating, revising, or implementing a BCP will gain helpful information to use and share.

Currently, there is no vaccine for COVID-19. Therefore, the situation requires extreme physical and social distancing, as well as effective hand washing, and stay-at-home are in effect worldwide. This response may be upgraded due to changing circumstances. Follow the orders set by your local, state, and federal governments. Take precautions to keep yourself and those around you safe from exposure.

Get the latest information from the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) about COVID-19:
Symptoms, Guidance and Latest Updates

Cisco’s Framework for Remote Access

Cisco IT continuously monitors the status of all business platforms including Cisco Webex® Meetings and Webex Teams.™ It is no easy feat to go from 39 billion events (logins, calls, videos initiated, messages sent, etc.) per day to over 270 billion events per day within a week. But this is what happened following the work- from-home directive that came into force in the middle of March 2020. The map shows Cisco’s implementation of the mandatory work-from-home policy in different locations around the world.

Cisco IT could confidently support employees working from home(WFH), first in the Asia Pacific, Japan, and China regions and then eventually expanding the work-from- home policy all over the world. Initially, people were focusing on Remote Access VPN capability, which can provide employees access to internal company resources.

To fully enable business continuity, it’s not just VPN connectivity. It’s also about working productively using collaboration tools like e-mail, IM, voice, and video. It’s about ensuring business critical applications such as Salesforce, Enterprise GitHub, etc. have good performance while employees work from home.

Cisco IT takes a broad view of global remote access for our employees and has developed a four-layer framework to put the business and IT capabilities in place.

Capacity and Resiliency Planning

Cisco IT has been expanding its VPN capacity and resiliency in response to the need to support employees working from home. In an emergency, when employees are sent home to work, the resiliency and capacity must be able to handle the additional traffic. For example, ensure having enough IP addresses in the VPN IP address pool, enough sessions supported by the VPN head-end, and enough licenses enabled.

For more info, join the Webinar: Adapting VPN Deployment When All Your Workforce is Remote

Increase VPN Remote Access capacity and manage security vulnerabilities
with your Cisco Customer Experience team. Explore the CX Offers for Secure Remote Workers.

Basic Connectivity: VPN

The most critical layer in the framework is connectivity with VPN.

What Is VPN?

A virtual private network, or VPN, is an encrypted connection over the public Internet from a device to a corporate or a private network. The encrypted connection helps ensure that sensitive data is safely transmitted. VPN technology is widely used in corporate environments. Cisco offers a wide array of VPN products and solutions

VPN connectivity empowers Cisco’s employees to work from anywhere on company laptops or personal mobile devices and access internal company resources. It also provides the visibility and controls our security teams need to identify who and which devices are accessing the infrastructure.

The first thing Cisco IT did is to evaluate the feasibility of supporting every employee to work from home. This evaluation required capacity planning.

Basic Connectivity: VPN

The most critical layer in the framework is connectivity with VPN.

Load Balancing

Load balancing is another important consideration during capacity and resiliency planning. A next-generation firewall (NGFW) VPN Load Balancing cluster can be used to direct VPN traffic to the least loaded NGFW device, thus distributing the load among all NGFW devices. It makes efficient use of system resources and provides increased performance and availability.

More information can be found here: VPN Load Balancing

Identity Management for VPN

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is a next-generation identity and access control policy platform that enables enterprises to enforce compliance, enhance infrastructure security, and streamline their service operations. The unique architecture of Cisco ISE allows enterprises to gather real-time contextual information from networks, users, and devices. The administrator can then use that information to make proactive governance decisions by tying identity to various network elements.

More information can be found here: Cisco ISE

VPN Split Tunneling

Cisco IT has implemented split tunneling to handle the increased VPN traffic load caused by the work-from-home order. Cisco uses the Cisco AnyConnect® Client to provide the split tunneling for VPN capabilities to all devices. Cisco AnyConnect is a unified security endpoint agent that delivers multiple security services.

By default, the VPN client is configured to forward all traffic over the VPN tunnel. Split tunneling allows to tunnel only certain traffic to specific internal protected networks, while all other traffic bypasses the VPN tunnel. Cisco IT has decided to approach this from the opposite way, by having all traffic forwarded over the VPN tunnel with the exception of trusted cloud-based services. By doing this, you can move out of the VPN tunnel the traffic of some applications that are using Internet access. This can result in substantial savings of VPN bandwidth capacity and load on the VPN head-ends, especially with high-bandwidth types of data traffic such as video conferencing.

Cisco IT has applied split tunneling for known trusted Internet connected services, such as Office 365, iCloud, MacOS Updates, OneDrive, SharePoint, Windows Update, Windows Azure related FQDNs, Box, and CiscoTV. For these applications, the VPN client sends that traffic directly through the Internet without the need for it to be sent to the Cisco VPN headend first.

Although split tunneling can improve the performance of applications that do not require the VPN tunnel (such as Internet access), it can increase risk because the client is unprotected by central site security mechanisms when it connects to the other networks. Be thoughtful when choosing which applications to route over the VPN tunnel and which ones to route straight to the Internet. Or determine whether split tunneling is even an option for your organization..

See the following for more on split tunneling:
VPN Split Tunneling Guidelines

Cisco Umbrella

Cisco Umbrella® is a plug-in connected to Cisco AnyConnect that combines multiple security functions into one solution. With Umbrella, you can extend protection to devices, remote users, and distributed locations anywhere. It protects users from malicious Internet destinations whether they are on or off the network. Because it is delivered from the cloud, Umbrella makes it easy to protect users everywhere in minutes.

The Cisco Umbrella Roaming Security module for Cisco AnyConnect provides always-on security on any network, anywhere, any time—both on and off your corporate VPN. The Roaming Security module enforces security at the DNS layer to block malware, phishing, and command and control callbacks over any port. Umbrella provides real-time visibility into all Internet activity per hostname (and optionally AD username) both on and off your network or VPN. The client may optionally be disabled on network to defer to on network settings.
.

For more information:
Cisco Umbrella: 3 Steps to Secure Remote Workers and Students 14 Day Free Trial of Cisco Umbrella

VPN Monitoring and Continuous Optimization

After implementing a work from home policy, it’s critical to keep monitoring the
connectivity status with continuous planning and optimizing. Ensure that these
metrics are used to test the split tunneling traffic for even more applications to
lower the VPN bandwidth demand. For example, the graphs show the VPN
utilization in % with the number of peak VPN connections along with employee
VPN utilization.

VPN Best Practices

Bandwidth availability is also essential not only for collaboration but for accessing work. With more users connecting remotely, consider these best practices to manage VPN traffic and amplify collaboration experiences:

Configure a Split Tunnel
Configuring desktop VPN clients to direct Webex traffic to the Internet rather than across the VPN tunnel. To process Webex traffic through your VPN tunnels, revisit the ports and protocol information.
Keep It Light
Schedule downloads, upgrades, backups etc. to occur outside of normal working hours. And stream only business- related content when connected
over VPN.
Be Intentional
Video is a valuable part of remote collaboration, and when needed can be used with minimal bandwidth impacts by limiting video use to presenters only.

Learn more: Cisco Webex Meetings

COVID-19: Cisco WFH AnyConnect VPN Utilization Data Example

Employee VPN Utilization by Hub

Related Special offers:

Secure Remote Worker
Enterprise VPN and Security Services
Pop-up sites
Business Resiliency Strategy and Roadmap

Basic Collaboration

Webex daily meeting volume has more than doubled since the beginning of March and expanded 2.5 times since February.
At peak hours, meeting volume is up 24 times where it would be normally. This is a testament to the scalability of the platform and the adaptability in the face of unprecedented requirements from our customers. All this requires close monitoring and extreme agility in providing new infrastructure to accommodate the increased demand on the platforms. Network, data center, Internet Service Provider (ISP), and Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) connections are constantly kept under surveillance and rerouting to sites that are under less utilization is done as necessary. A follow-the-sun resource allocation method is also applied to better distribute resources based on time of day.

The second layer for business continuity preparation is collaboration — being able to work together in remote locations.

Remote workers require access to critical collaboration tools in normal times. In emergency situations, access to these tools is even more important. While Webex Teams, Email, and Voice are standard, additional attention to Webex Meetings will improve quality and the overall meeting experience.

This section will cover essential information you need to know about collaboration.

Getting Started with Cisco Webex

Are you ready? Take an assessment of where simple changes can help your users connect and collaborate as easily and effectively as they do in the office. You may need to work with your Cisco Account Manager or Cisco Channel Partner to have your WebEx Organization provisioned.

Download your remote work communication pack
Access other adoption guides and toolkits
Free online class: Webex Rapid Onboarding

Also, this application note summarizes how to optimize
existing capacity in Cisco Mobile and Remote Access (MRA) deployments — including guidance on assessing
additional capacity.

Traffic Control

As your teams begin the shift to work-from-home, ensure that your users can continue to collaborate effectively as they continue to deliver business. Your network may need to be configured differently to provide a quality collaboration experience in this new way of working. Include the following in your assessment:

Media Transport

Using Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) in a near congested network will cause retransmissions, which in turn can create a choppy video or low bandwidth error experience. User Datagram Protocol (UDP) does not retransmit and will provide a better video experience.

Critical Ports

In order to connect to Webex, you must have a working DNS server. Most DNS queries are made over UDP; however, DNS queries may use TCP as well. The Webex Client makes the majority of its data transfers and loading using HTTPS over port 443. In some cases, port 80 will also be used before being redirected to a secure connection. Webex Events Audio Broadcast is available only on TCP port 443.

Exceptions

a. When all three ports (UDP 9000, TCP 80, TCP 5004) are blocked, audio and video will not work for sending and receiving.
b. Receiving static (Desktop/Application/Content) sharing will work if these ports (UDP 9000, TCP 80, TCP 5004) are closed: however, sending static shares will not.
c. With High FPS sharing, both sending and receiving content will not work.

See the following for a complete list of IP ranges used by Webex:
How Do I Allow Webex Meetings Traffic on My Network?

Bandwidth Management

The amount of bandwidth available can have a dramatic impact on the experience users have when leveraging Cisco Webex to work together.
To test home bandwidth, go to: Cisco Webex Network Test

Note: Disconnect from the VPN for the actual network speed.

Home-based users should find out whether their ISP is providing sufficient upload and download speeds to support their new at-home workday.
For video, the following is recommended:

High Definition Video	High Quality Video	Standard Quality Video
2.5 Mbps (Receive)	1.0 Mbps (Receive)	0.5 Mbps (Receive)
3.0 Mbps (Send)	1.5 Mbps (Send)	0.5 Mbps (Send)

The actual bandwidth needed can vary based on multiple factors, including:

The make and model of the web camera used
The resolution setting of the camera and the frames per
second (FPS) setting
Number of cameras activated in the meeting
Number of active cameras on the same network
Number of users actively using the network
The bandwidth of other activities, such as screen sharing,
Voice over IP (VOIP), etc.

Whether or not the PC in question is transmitting video or only receiving
For more, see the following:
What are the Minimum Bandwidth Requirements for Sending and Receiving Video in Cisco Webex Meetings?

Rapid Onboarding

Claim your domain to ensure new users with that domain are automatically created within your organization.

If users signed up using their enterprise account before the domain claim was in place, you can move those users over to your Webex organization.
Claim Users to Your Organization (Convert Users)
Prepare Your Licenses — Modify your automatic license assignment template in Control Hub to assign licenses to new users.
Modify Your Automatic License Assignment Template
Add New Users manually, by csv or directory synchronization.
Add, Verify, and Claim Domains

Monitoring and Optimizing Cisco Webex Experience

It’s critical to keep monitoring the Webex health metrics, and continuous planning and optimizing as needed.

You can check the statuses of various Webex services by going to
Latest Webex Status Information. More detailed metrics can be examined
from the Control Hub of the Webex organization dashboard.

The following shows the Webex Usage Dashboard:

Percentage of users in a meeting
Audio Quality
Video Quality
VoIP Quality Daily Calls

Optimize Webex

With an increased number of remote workers, available VPN bandwidth
must be properly managed. Consider the following:

1. Large Events Should be Handled with Care

Use Webex Events
Instruct attendees to disconnect from the VPN

2. Minimize Complications

Webex is available on any device. You can configure your site to default to the Webex web app so that personal devices can join in the browser.

3. Educate Users

If VPN bandwidth is congested, users can connect to the meeting directly.
If home networks cannot support the video traffic, recommend that users turn off their web cam while in the web meeting.
To further optimize home bandwidth, users can call in to the meeting with the meeting’s PSTN numbers rather than joining via computer audio.

Manage Audio Options

Webex provides multiple audio options to ensure collaboration can
happen anywhere, anytime.

Manage Audio Costs

For a robust collaboration experience, instruct users to use call-in
rather than call-back; find details in the meeting invitation. Combine
call-in with the desktop app.

Manage Telco Experiences

As Telco providers increase capacity to support a remote workforce,
there may be stress on the local infrastructure. Webex provides multiple
phone numbers per site for service redundancy. If needed, users
can use an alternate number.

Mobile Devices

When connecting on-the-go, use the Webex mobile app. It provides the same calendar options with the same green join button that users experience on the desktop. The mobile app can be configured for automatic call-in to make for fast, convenient joins.

Choose VoIP

Webex allows users to connect to meetings using their computers. Using the built-in computer audio is not only easy but provides a cost-effective solution. Instruct your users to install the Webex desktop application before they need to join a meeting to ensure timely entry.

Note: Disconnecting from the VPN during meetings will minimize the temptation to multi-task and increase attention to the collaboration session — driving greater productivity.

See the following for more info:
Can I Join the Audio Using Webex VoIP If UDP and RTP Traffic is
Blocked in My Network?

Webex Meeting Considerations

Consult with your security team prior to opening the proper ports and enable protocols to deliver Webex effectively to your end users. In addition, discuss the following less technical, but still incredibly important issues to ensure your users have confidence that their collaboration experiences are delivered with the confidentiality required to collaborate openly.

Go Unlisted

Having publicly listed meetings becomes not only a possible security risk, but it can divulge privileged business information to anyone who accesses the public front-end of your organization’s Webex site (*.webex. com): product info, marketing strategies, and HR concerns or even the seemingly mundane day-to-day meetings hosted. Cisco recommends forcing all meetings to be “Unlisted” to protect privileged information.

Auto Lock

As an administrator, you can enforce secure habits while enabling
ease-of-collaboration with Personal Meeting Rooms. Choose whether or
not to let individual hosts modify the setting at a later time.

See the following:
Manage Personal Rooms for a Webex Site in Cisco Webex Control Hub
Manage Personal Rooms for Your Site in Cisco Webex Site Administration

Secure remote workforce collaboration offerings empower workers and students to be productive remotely.
Explore the various collaboration offers to support remote learning, virtual assistance, flexible work options.
Virtual Visitation
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Business Resiliency Strategy and Roadmap
MRA for Collaboration Endpoints

Hosting Secure Meetings

Cisco Webex Meetings Suite helps enable global employees and
virtual teams to meet and collaborate in real time as though they
were working in the same room. Businesses, institutions, and government agencies worldwide rely on Cisco Webex to simplify business processes
and improve results for sales, marketing, training, project management,
and support teams.

For all organizations and their users, security is a fundamental concern.
Online collaboration must provide multiple levels of security; from
scheduling meetings to authenticating participants to sharing content.

Cisco Webex Meetings provides a secure environment, yet it can be
configured as an open place to collaborate. Understanding the security
features as site administrators and end users can allow you to tailor your
Webex site to your business needs.

See the following for additional info:

Cisco Webex Best Practices for Secure Meetings: Hosts
Cisco Webex Best Practices for Secure Meetings: Control Hub
Cisco Webex Best Practices for Secure Meetings: Site Administration

Some Best Practices from Cisco

Webex meetings have never been more vital for staying connected. This is also putting a tremendous strain on regional Internet service providers and telephony providers, which may result in telephony incidents or service degradation at certain peak times.

Here are a few tips that Cisco has implemented during these unusual times to get the best meeting experience in any situation:

Download the Webex Meetings application on every device.
Shift your schedule! Join 5 minutes early or 10 minutes past the hour
Close background applications. Before your meeting, close everything you are not using
Turn off VPN. It can limit the bandwidth available to Webex
Reduce simultaneous streaming activities
Hardwire your workstation.
Run a speed test! Learn more at Cisco Webex Network Test
Share content before a call. Sending files before a meeting
Choose audio over video. Learn more at cs.co/slow- connection
Switch to call in audio. Learn more at cs.co/dial-in

For more info, see:
Cisco Webex Meetings
Best practices for great online meetings
How Do I Find the Global Dial-In Number for My Meeting?

Business Applications

Layer three in the framework is about ensuring that business-critical applications perform securely in the expanded infrastructure. It’s important to build critical application lists for each function, including engineering, sales and CX. The initial assessment is that most business-critical applications will be available via VPN.

For Cisco, applications like Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and salesforce automation are critical to ensure the continuity of the business. From a support perspective, Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC), together with partners and customers, need uninterrupted access to ticketing platforms and troubleshooting labs, and continuous updates to ensure their businesses are continuing to function as expected.

Monitoring Systems

Cisco’s AppDynamics allows you to receive monitoring alerts on infrastructure metrics, application, and business transaction. Calculating deviations from normal behavior based on algorithms, AppDynamics sends you alerts only when necessary. Application environments have exploded in complexity in recent years.
IT teams have been asked to manage that complexity while often navigating operational silos that make collaboration and data exchange challenging, at best.
At the same time, containerization, the rise of cloud, edge computing, and IoT have created more dependencies across the stack than ever before —
and the momentum shows no sign of stopping.

Key Benefits of AppDynamics:

Get complete visibility into application performance
Track and monitor business transactions in real time
Receive alerts and identify issues before they impact your business
Diagnose and fix problems fast

For more, go to: AppDynamics

Security Risks

When people are working from home, the security risk also increases.
It’s important to apply key technologies to protect remote workers from anywhere, anytime, on any device.

Cisco Duo Beyond

Cisco Duo Beyond has integrated with VPN connectivity to add multi-factor authentication to VPN client logins. Duo Security enables organizations to
verify users’ identities and establish device trust before granting access to applications. By employing a zero-trust model, it decreases the attack surface and reduces risk. With this offer, existing customers can exceed their user limit to support an increase in remote workers, and new customers can access a free license.

For more info, see:
Duo Beyond Overview
Get Your Free Duo Account

AMP for Endpoints

Cisco AMP for Endpoints provides comprehensive protection against the most advanced attacks. Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) blocks attacks and helps you respond to threats quickly. It prevents breaches and blocks malware at the point of entry, then rapidly detects, contains, and remediates advanced threats that evade front-line defenses and get inside your network.

For more info, see:
Cisco AMP for Endpoints

AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client

Cisco AnyConnect® Secure Mobility Client empowers worldwide Cisco’s employees to work from anywhere on company laptops or personal mobile devices. It also provides the visibility and control our security teams need to identify who and which devices are accessing the infrastructure.

For more information, see:
Obtaining an Emergency COVID-19 AnyConnect License
AnyConnect VPN, Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA), and FTD FAQ for Secure Remote Workers
AnyConnect VPN Client Connections Cisco ASA Series VPN CLI Configuration Guide, 9.13
AnyConnect VPN Wizard Cisco ASA Series VPN ASDM Configuration Guide, 7.13

Optimization

The goal of Quality of Service (QoS) is to provide a better and more predictable network service by providing dedicated bandwidth, controlled jitter and latency, and improved loss characteristics as required
by the business applications. QoS achieves these goals by providing tools for managing network congestion, shaping network traffic, using expensive wide-area links more efficiently, and setting traffic policies across the network.

QoS offers intelligent network services that, when correctly applied, help to provide consistent, predictable performance.

For more, see: Introducing QoS - Converged Networks

See the following for more: Advanced Diagnostics and Troubleshooting in Control Hub

Analytics to Track Webex Site and Service Usage

The Analytics section on the Webex Control Hub shows how your users use your Webex site and services. Go to Analytics and select the service that you want to receive data for. Within Meetings, you can use classic reports to receive data on Webex Meetings, Webex Events, Webex Training, and Webex Support. You can also use metric analytics to see how your users interact with Webex Meetings.

See the following:
Use Classic Cisco Webex Meeting Reports
Analytics for Your Cloud Collaboration Portfolio

Recommended CX Offers:

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Virtual Visitation
Virtual Education
Enterprise VPN and Security Services
Business Resiliency Strategy and Roadmap

Complex Use Cases

This is the fourth layer in the framework for remote access.
Since many recent conferences and events have been cancelled, and travel is restricted for some, we’re looking
at the best ways to host large virtual events while helping
our customers do the same.

Scenario 1: Digital Events

During this unprecedented time, large annual events must be canceled —
that includes Cisco Live! The health and well-being of customers, partners, employees and communities is of utmost importance and must come first.

Solution:

Go Digital! Cisco Live was one of the first major technology conferences to include both live stream and on-demand content. This year, Cisco Live US is going from an in- person event to a digital only event that will now take place over two days. Making this decision early enables the teams to divert all available resources to planning and developing the event. The goal is to mirror the in-person experience and bring it to life as a digital event. Check it out to see what works and what doesn’t and what can be used in your company.

For more information, see: Cisco Webex Events

Scenario 2:
Training / Mary’s Workshop

Mary has a workshop she was due to deliver at the local office to 20 attendees but now the office is closed, and everyone is working from home. Most of the workshop was focused on group work.

Solution:

Cisco Webex Training Center has a number of features that will support Mary to deliver training that Cisco Meeting Center doesn’t. The most important feature in Mary’s case is the breakout room feature. This feature enables her to split her group into smaller groups and essentially put each group in a separate breakout room. Within the breakout room, each group can discuss their ideas, share a file, and still complete the group work Mary would have completed in the classroom. Mary can move between groups to see how the groups are progressing and the groups themselves can click a button to request Mary’s presence. Once the time is up,
Mary can end the breakout sessions and bring everyone back to the main room.

Full PDF User Guide covering setting up conferences, managing privileges and how to use all the tools we have discussed above.

Cisco WebEx Training Center — Web-based User Guide
Webex Training — An online self-paced course for users

Virtual Education by Webex - Enable a quality virtual
educational experience with help from your
Cisco Customer Experience team.

Scenario 3: Call Center

Cisco CX has to perform and offer the same level of support if not better to our customers and partners in these times of uncertainty. This means that Cisco TAC has to be able to perform their day-to-day work (answering customer and partner requirements coming in through phone, chat, email, etc.) from anywhere at any time.

Solution:

Cisco IT had already setup most of the call center workers’ laptops with VPN remote connectivity software, IP softphones, Cisco Finesse clients and all the required tools required to perform their jobs from home if needed. Where needed, new laptops have been set up in an expedited fashion. In some situations, solutions like Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
were considered as an alternative to offering access to
already pre-set working environments.

Cisco Finesse — Next-generation collaborative customer care

Enable contact center employees to work from home with these CX offers:

Webex Contact Center

Mobile Agent on Unified Contact Center

Additional advice to home workers

Here are some key considerations on how you can stay connected and remain productive while working remotely

Work Life Balance

As work-life boundaries blur, open and frequent communication is key for setting expectations on how groups will collaborate and come together. It’s also important not to overcommit or overwork your employees as they need time to transition to new work environments. Encouraging remote workers to organize their day with small breaks, and keep daily rituals such as lunch or exercise, will allow for balance and enhance mental health. Establishing a culture of trust, collaboration, and frequent team meetings will keep team members connected while also allowing them to adapt to staying at home.

Going Video

Enabling your work force to work remote and from home can create conditions that are distracting, disorienting, and isolating. Encourage and promote video conferencing. It can create a culture of inclusion and helps connect team members. Employees who learn to embrace their video cameras are more engaged and productive. The power of web conferencing can build teamwork and curtail workers from feeling isolated.

A working group using telepresence will accelerate a transition to virtual and remote while helping employees feel connected in meaningful way.

Overall, it’s important to consider technology that enables your workforce to stay safe during the pandemic and allows workers to stay connected and productive.

More info from Harvard Business Review:
A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers

CX offer for Business Resiliency Strategy and Roadmap can enable you to get ready for anything in today’s dynamic, fast-changing work environment. Utilize the Cisco CX advisory capabilities and expertise to help you develop a customized business resiliency strategy and roadmap.

In Conclusion

It’s our hope that by sharing some of our own experiences, best practices, and free resources, we can work through this uncertain time together. Questions concerning this guide can be directed to: Cisco Contact/Department

Acronyms

ACL	Access Control List
AMP	Advanced Malware Protection
ASA	Adaptive Security Appliance
ASDM	Adaptive Security Device Manager
BCP	Business Continuity Practice
CCW	Cisco Commerce Workspace
CLI	Command Line Interface
CPU	Central Processing Unit
CRM	Customer Relationship Management
DNS	Domain Name System
FPS	Frames per Second
FQDN	Fully Qualified Domain Name
FTD	Firepower Threat Defense
IP	Internet Protocol
ISE	Cisco Identity Services Engine
IT	Internet Technology

MIB	Management Information Base
NGFW	Next Generation Firewall
OID	Object Identifier
QoE	Quality of Experience
QoS	Quality of Service
RAVPN	Remote Access VPN
SaaS	Software as a Service
SNMP	Simple Network Management Protocol
SSL	Secure Sockets Layer
TAC	Technical Assistance Center
TCP	Transmission Control Protocol
UDP	User Datagram Protocol
VDI	Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
VOIP	Voice Over IP
VPN	Virtual Private Network