Questions on enabling work from home in response to Coronavirus? Mark Lee, CEO of Splashtop, answers your top remote access questions below:
Q&A with Mark Lee
Q: Our employees need to work from home during the COVID-19 crisis. How can we set up a remote workplace quickly?
A: During the COVID-19 crisis, we have seen tremendous demand for Splashtop Business Access, both cloud and enterprise on-premise solutions. Companies and individuals are looking for ways to be safe while remaining productive. You can quickly set your team up with anytime remote access to their work computers from our Work From Home solution page.
Q: I heard that we need a VPN for my employees to work remotely. Is that true?
A: Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are expensive to set up and maintain, and if not configured or managed properly, there could be significant security risks. For example, if employees access the corporate network via VPN from home computers that are infected with malware or ransomware, the compromised home computers could infect the whole corporate network through the VPN connection. VPNs also do not offer the level of granular access control and management that a remote access solution does.
Q: My company already has a VPN. Isn’t that enough to allow my employees to work from home?
A: To remote access corporate computers, often users need to use Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) or VNC. There are various performance and compatibility issues with these solutions across different devices and operating system platforms. A simple, high performance solution like Splashtop Business Access offers a seamless, productive experience for the users.
Q: Then how do Splashtop remote access products work with my company VPN?
A: Unlike RDP and VNC which are often slow and sluggish over VPN in a WAN environment, Splashtop works very well over VPN as it’s a WAN-optimized, high performance remote access solution. At the same time, Splashtop supports 2FA, device authentication, audit trails, session recording, TLS/SSL encrypted traffic, and various manageability features. There is actually no need to use VPN.
Q: Splashtop has offices in many areas of the world, including China. What steps has you taken to cooperate with local government health directives to allow employees to work remotely?
A: The COVID-19 outbreak happened during Chinese New Year holiday break so our Chinese employees were already back to their home in different provinces. Fortunately, we are a remote access technology company so all our employees already had Splashtop installed on their office computers. Our employees were immediately able to stay safe and also productive by using Splashtop to remote work from home. As the outbreak expanded to our other offices in Taipei, Tokyo, Singapore, Amsterdam, and San Jose (CA), we also established policies to enable employees to work from home using Splashtop.
Q: What advice do you give companies setting up remote access for employees for the first time?
A: Unfortunately, sometimes it takes an emergency to spur businesses to improve their technology infrastructures and update remote-work policies. COVID-19 has made a lot of us more aware generally of the need for flexibility in where and how people get their work done. Remote access is a critical tool that organizations can use to boost their resiliency and support business continuity.
COVID-19 isn’t the first global crisis we’ve encountered, and it’s a sure bet it won’t be the last. Beyond supporting business continuity, remote access can help diminish the time and stress of long commutes, support employees’ work/life balance, and help attract and retain new generation workers, who embrace telework as an important lifestyle attribute.
Q: Why is Splashtop offering product discounts to new customers during the COVID-19 outbreak?
A: As responsible corporate citizens, we believe it’s our duty to help others become more resilient during this COVID-19 outbreak. We take this commitment very seriously, which is why we’re making our products available at reduced cost. See more on discounts in North America and Europe.
