As more companies settle into remote work for the long haul, either by allowing employees to work from home indefinitely or by deploying a flexible, part-time remote model, it’s important to not get lax on security. Remote workers need tools to stay secure wherever they work from, and using a VPN on its own might not be enough.
Instead, companies can benefit from more comprehensive security solutions like Cisco AnyConnect, which combines powerful VPN features with additional security protections across your network and endpoints.
In particular, Cisco AnyConnect provides key security features such as:
#1. Intelligent VPN: Having a secure VPN helps extend the protections of your corporate network to your employees who connect from home, including when using their own devices. Yet AnyConnect’s intelligent VPN goes a step further to even protect your employees on the go, which can be particularly helpful once employees start taking business trips again. So as employees roam, AnyConnect’s intelligent VPN will “automatically select the optimal network access point and adapt its tunneling protocol to the most efficient method,” notes Cisco.
#2. Endpoint Defenses: AnyConnect helps defend your endpoints with proactive security methods like checking whether remote employees’ devices have up-to-date anti-virus and firewall protections. And if an endpoint isn’t secure, the solution can block VPN access to protect your corporate network.
#3. Web Protection: In addition to endpoint defenses, AnyConnect also helps secure employees’ devices and your corporate network via web-based protection. For example, AnyConnect can block malware and phishing threats that employees might come across while browsing the web.
#4. User and Device Authentication: You want to be able to trust that only the appropriate users and devices are accessing your network, so AnyConnect uses the IEEE 802.1X standard for authentication. As such, you can easily manage user and device identities and provide trusted access accordingly.
#5. Network Oversight: Improving your security also depends on being able to oversee your network activity and spot unusual behavior that could signal security risks. AnyConnect enables administrators to view endpoint application usage, and this data can be integrated with other Cisco tools like Stealthwatch, which helps analyze your network traffic to identify security issues.
Improve Your Remote Work Security With Cisco AnyConnect
With these AnyConnect security features, you can reduce security risks while making remote work seamless for your employees. A strong VPN is important, but that’s only one part of enabling secure remote work. AnyConnect provides a number of additional defenses and integrations to help protect your organization.
To learn more about how to improve remote work security, download our new guide, 5 Reasons to Protect Your VPN With MFA.
