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Networks & Infrastructure
Industry View
Virtually, the perfect solution
Secure remote management is transforming the telecommunications industry
by Bill Whitney, Cryptek, Inc.
Setting up and maintaining a telecommunications system is not for the faint of heart. Any company that’s deployed and run its own telecommunications system knows all too well the challenges involved. After researching and evaluating the rapidly-evolving technologies and selecting the system that’s right for you, the real hard work begins. Now you’ll need to create a technology support team to implement and maintain this critical and complex connection to the outside world.
The challenge is, with every passing year, problems are becoming technically more complex and therefore harder to diagnose and fix. It now takes a roster of subject matter experts to maintain and support phone network uptime. You’ll need a reliable technician who can support the telecommunications hardware, but you’ll also need a sharp software developer to troubleshoot and correct any issues that emerge from the growing software component of telecommunications systems.
With increased specialization, proprietary products and the rate at which technology changes, having a full time team of in-house experts gets more and more expensive. It’s no wonder that companies are increasingly deciding to outsource their entire telecommunications infrastructures to third parties.
Rather than spending precious time and effort deploying a system that requires significant ongoing maintenance, outsourcing telephony support to a third party offers predictable costs and service levels. This managed service approach eliminates day-to-day distractions of supporting a complex communications environment and allows your company to reallocate its resources to other high-priority areas impacting business success.
The remote management shift
As companies turned to managed service providers, the providers took on an increased level of responsibility for addressing any problems with the telecommunications systems.
Historically, telecommunications managed service providers would send out a technician in a truck when they received a customer call that lines were down. As telecommunications equipment became more complex, the service technician discovered that many of the repairs they performed were actually software fixes and had nothing to do with the hardware. They quite simply did not need their screwdriver at all for nine out of ten service calls. Instead, they would get on the phone with an IT software pro back at headquarters, and he or she would walk them through fixing the problem.
Though the on-site troubleshooting combined with the call to the IT shop technically worked, it was not efficient. First, it took time — often an unpredictable amount of time — to physically send a technician out on a call. Considering how critical telecommunication systems are for the client’s business, lost time meant lost productivity and revenue. In addition, there’s the direct cost to the telecommunications company. Sending out the manned truck costs US$350 on average per run, and once the technician reaches the site, the problem is more often than not something that they can’t fix on their own.
Telecommunications providers quickly saw the direction the market was heading and realized that if they could troubleshoot problems remotely, without sending out the truck, they could provide faster service while also saving a substantial amount of money.
Dial-up diagnostics rise up
By turning to the Internet to handle remote repair and support functions, telecoms thought they had overcome the technical hurdles and expense inherent in the truck dispatch model. The new approach relied on low speed, dial-up Internet connections through which remote support could flow. But, once again, a solution applied to one problem created issues in other areas. Two of the biggest challenges of the dial-up approach were bandwidth and security.
Regarding bandwidth, it’s called low-speed for a reason. Dial-up operates at a minimal bandwidth, yet the dial-up solution needed to address problems in an increasingly complex telecom landscape. The dial-up pipeline was not keeping up. As systems grew increasingly more sophisticated, higher bandwidth connections were needed to manage them.
In addition, security was and remains a top priority for any business relying on an Internet connection. Unauthorized access to a network was the nightmare that kept both executives and IT professionals up at night. In some cases a “no modems” policy was decreed to remove the threat of hacking, yet it inadvertently also removed dial-up as an option for remote support.
As is typically the case in the technology industry, when a new challenge arises, a new solution follows suit to address the issue. In remote managed services, Virtual Private Networks (VPN) emerged as the most viable solution, yet it was a solution with its own set of limitations.
Move toward VPNs
The same technology companies were using to let employees log into the computer network remotely became the conduit for telecommunications companies to perform basic monitoring and troubleshooting on behalf of clients. Though VPNs provided a significant improvement in determining if there was a communications problem, it still had some issues, among them the fact that service technicians did not have necessary admin-level access to the systems they are responsible for monitoring and fixing.
In addition, most telecommunications firms faced significant hurdles in their ability to remotely run the business processes they use to monitor systems and automatically detect problems as soon as they occur. This level of monitoring and management requires developer-level access into the telecommunications systems in order to address problems remotely. That is not currently possible through many VPNs. Also, given the security problems this scenario presents, customers are reluctant to grant this level of access.
And if access issues weren’t problem enough, telecoms faced the prospect of setting up and managing VPNs for each of their clients — an impossible prospect for companies with hundreds or even thousands of customers. The model was not scalable, and as a result, many telecoms had to forego the VPN option and stick with dial-up administration.
Faced with limitations inherent to dial-up solutions and VPN’s, new remote management technologies emerged that provide the level of access to systems needed to manage, monitor and maintain telecom applications.
Securing remote access
Secure remote management is a way to access computers from an off-site location through a secure, high-speed Internet connection. The connection is password protected, encrypted, and it is closely tracked with user action logging and auditing.
Secure remote management technology differs from — and is more useful than — dial-up and VPNs in significant ways. It offers the simplicity and cost effectiveness of dial up combined with the high-bandwidth capabilities and sophistication of VPN. It also adds unprecedented scalability and security into the managed services maintenance environment.
Secure management technology allows code-level access to systems on a network for users with proper authorization. This access means that telecom technicians can set up triggers to detect problems. Once the trigger is tripped, techs can go directly into the telecommunications system, determine the cause of the problem, and fix it if the problem is software-related. The tech not only sees applications on the network, he or she can make significant changes to the software, including installing patches, uninstalling software, changing configurations, etc. No truck. No travel time.
Often, the telecommunications technician can diagnose and fix a problem before the client has the chance to call in the problem. Remote access to systems also allows the telecommunications provider to rule out software-related problems before sending a technician out on a costly service call to address any hardware-related issues.
And as an added benefit, remote management technologies provide a much more sophisticated security layer — one that will easily comply with even the most stringent corporate or government security requirements and without hindering the service provider’s ability to deliver remote services.
Once a client installs secure remote management technology, they can determine what the telecommunications company can and can’t see, what they can and can’t do, and they can keep a record of the work that’s been performed and who performed it. Built-in audit and reporting features let the client track all activities, down to a technician level, using keystroke logging technology. This gives companies the authority to:
• Grant granular user access rights to telecommunications providers
• Log all session activity down to the keystroke level
• Receive notifications on administrator access and security events
• Set up notifications on security events
• View and terminate sessions
• Review activities to justify managed services costs
Once a telecommunications provider has access to a client’s telecom systems off-site, they can securely act on behalf of the client organization in order to maximize system uptime and performance.
Weighing the benefits
Secure remote management supports better relationships between telecommunications providers and their customers. Service level agreements are met, costs are decreased, and the provider can respond more quickly to service requests, and in many cases, can catch the problem before it becomes an issue for the client’s business.
The primary benefits derived from secure remote management include:
Reduced Costs: Remote management allows telecommunications personnel to be as effective servicing equipment as on-site staff. They can anticipate and diagnose problems, perform system upgrades and patches, modify system settings and perform any other functions required to make sure the system is running at peak performance. This is achieved more quickly and with fewer costly on-site visits to the client site.
Enforced Security Policies: Secure remote management provides encrypted access to devices, and it requires authorization for all users and audits their actions while using the system. Not only is this the most secure way to access systems remotely, it ensures security levels have been maintained.
Improved Service Levels: Remote personnel can find and fix problems before system performance is impacted. Systems can be monitored, measured and tracked in accordance with business processes, and if problems are detected, a remote technician is alerted to diagnose the problem and create a remediation plan.
Streamlined Compliance: Secure remote management includes a mechanism to collect and report on all activity performed on a system.
Telecommunications companies that tap into remote management technology as a tool for meeting customers needs tend to have happier customers while also saving on maintenance costs. When they’re expected to serve as an important part of their customers’ teams and maintain a mission critical component of their clients’ business, secure remote access is a win for both the client and the telecommunications firm. It is the perfect solution for addressing a complex problem in a challenging environment.
Bill Whitney is the chief technology officer (remote administration products) for Cryptek, Inc., where he provides the strategic technology vision and direction for the company's secure remote management products and solutions.
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