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The word “essential” gets used loosely these days. New TV shows are no longer advertised as entertaining or interesting — they’re proclaimed as essential. What about a new type of chocolate chip cookie that is more chocolate chip than cookie? Yes, that is also essential. And let us not overlook the latest (and of course greatest) smartphone, tablet, and wearable: essential, essential, and essential!
But on the other end of the hype spectrum, there are things in life that are legitimately essential — because we simply cannot do without them. And for millions of IT pros and teams around the world, one tool that they readily declare as essential is good remote desktop management software. Here are five reasons why:
1.,Drives Remote Working
The pandemic has unleashed the Era of Remote Working. Good remote connection management software enables IT pros to remain productive and efficient, regardless of where they are located: a home office, a customer site, or the corporate office. Since its cloud-based, they can continue the work journey across multiple devices.
And before moving on, we also need to add — and we apologize in advance for having to say this — but even if the very worst of Covid-19 (and its roster of variants is) behind us, public health experts have warned that we will likely have to deal with larger pandemics in the years to come. Ideally, when that happens, we will have better strategies to mitigate the negative impact. However, it is prudent for IT pros to have the ability to rapidly pivot when (not if) we go through this again.
2.,Strengthens Security
Real estate professionals say that the three most important factors in evaluating a property are location, location, and location. Well, these days the core priorities for organizations of all sizes are security, security, and security (by the way, these priorities are closely followed by security and security).
As such, good remote connection management software is not just functional and feature-rich: it is also built to an enterprise-grade security standard. According to the 2021 IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average price tag of a data breach has skyrocketed to USD 4.24 million — which is the highest amount in the 17-year history of the report. And the Devolutions State of Cybersecurity in SMBs in 2021/2022 Survey Report revealed that 52% of SMBs have experienced a cyberattack in the last year — and 10% have experienced more 11 or more cyberattacks.
Essential (there’s that word again!) security features that you should look for in remote connection management software include:
- AES-256 encryption.
- Encrypted offline access.
- Account brokering, which automatically provisions privileged user and administrative accounts, and provides secure direct access to critical assets.
- Inherited security settings, which prevent users from creating accounts (unless they have been
- provided with the appropriate security level).
- The option to enhance encryption with a passphrase or certificate.
- Support for a wide range of 2FA tools (e.g., Google Authenticator, Yubikey).
- Support for encrypted communications over TLS.
- Access control (time-based, role-based, and discretionary)
- Logging and monitoring for governance, compliance, and audit trails.
3.,Improves Productivity
IT pros understand — better than many other folks — that the most precious commodity in business (and often in life itself) is not money, but TIME. After all, the amount of money fluctuates. But there will always be 24 hours in a day, and IT pros need to make the most of their time. Inefficiency is not just unwelcome: it is the enemy!
Good remote connection management software enables IT pros to “do more in less time” — but without (and we cannot stress this enough!) compromising performance or quality. After all, how is it beneficial to reduce the duration of a task if you must do it all over again?
Key features in remote connection management software that drive productivity and efficiency include:
- Support for an array of technologies (e.g., RDP, Citrix, VPN, SSH, VMware).
- The ability to launch one-click secure remote connections by directly injecting credentials into remote servers, systems, applications, and websites.
- The ability to manage jump hosts and internal machines from a single, centralized platform.
- “Playlists” that automatically launch a list of sessions in a specific order with one click.
- Customizable dashboards — so you can focus on vital information and ignore what isn’t important.
- The ability to sync with external data sources (e.g., AD, CSV, VMWare).
- Multiple session script tools to retrieve information, perform an action, change an item, or change the configuration for a session.
- The ability to easily manage contacts.
- The ability to import or export sessions, login credentials and contacts.
4.,Enhances Teamwork
Good remote connection software integrates with AD, which ensures that everyone can access the latest and therefore the most accurate data (e.g., remote connections, server access, website credentials), teamwork is efficient — and nobody is left “out of the loop”.
At the same time, it should be easy — and even more importantly, safe — to share credentials and other sensitive information. Consider this scenario: Phil is a smart and experienced SysAdmin, but he is having trouble with a remote desktop issue. He wants to reach out to his team member Sheila to collaborate, yet he knows that sharing connection settings through email or text is insecure. Fortunately, Phil’s company has good remote connection management software in the toolkit, which stores connections settings and credentials in an encrypted and centralized database. And so, he simply asks Sheila for help. Since she has the appropriate permissions, she logs into the database, launches a session, and starts collaborating.
And yes, of course, they solved the problem — they are IT superheroes after all!
5.,Saves Money and Maximizes Budgets
As discussed earlier, good remote connection management software saves time and reduces — or better yet, eliminates — tedious rework. This makes IT pros more productive (which is good for them) and more profitable (which is good for their company).
With this being said, it is important to point out that some remote connections software, while functional, is rather expensive. While this may not be a big deal for large enterprises, for SMBs it can be an insurmountable obstacle. Fortunately, there are some solutions that are both robust and affordable — not one instead of the other. They also offer multiple licensing options to suit various needs and budgets.
The Final Word
IT pros are a diverse group and getting them to agree on something can be challenging (for proof of this, simply show up at an IT conference and say: “In a battle between Star Wars and Star Trek, who wins?” — and then sit back and enjoy the festivities!).
But there is one thing that IT pros readily agree on, regardless of whether they are solo specialists, or are employed by Fortune 100 enterprises: good remote connection management software is not merely helpful, valuable, or even important. It is ESSENTIAL.
Give Remote Desktop Manager a Try
Our powerful, yet easy-to-use remote desktop management solution Remote Desktop Manager is trusted by more than 800,000 IT pros worldwide. Learn more about their experiences by checking out these Customer Stories, and then launch a free trial of Remote Desktop Manager to discover how it will help you and your organization support remote working, strengthen security, improve productivity, enhance teamwork, and save money.
Now, as for the Star Trek vs. Star Wars thing…actually, I’ll save that for another day!
