Today, the world is undergoing a tough time and business continuity has emerged as a new challenge for people. To overcome this challenge, employees have started working from home on a larger scale and this will continue to be part of our lives in the coming months as well. Remote working has become a new normal in today’s unprecedented times but using reliable solutions is a huge concern for companies in the current trend. Thereby, employers are deploying secure and effective WFH solutions that can assure security and boost productivity as well. AnyDesk, a well-known player in India currently who is providing the best WFH solution to a large customer base in India. Rajeev Ranjan, Editor & Publisher, Digital Terminal recently had an exclusive interaction with Finn Künkel, Principal Project Manager, AnyDesk to know about the current trends and overall offerings to meet the surging demand. Read below the excerpts:
Rajeev: What is the major impact on companies worldwide in the post-COVID-19 world?
Finn: The impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is being felt by businesses all around the world. Business leaders are navigating a broad range of interrelated issues, spanning from keeping their employees and customers safe, to saving cash and liquidity, to reorienting operations and navigating complicated government support programs. This pandemic has brought fast-moving and unexpected variables, some of which existing crisis plans and teams weren’t prepared to handle. As companies move from reacting to mitigating the impact of the outbreak, strategies that will position companies stronger for the future are coming to the forefront.
Rajeev: How are you working to ensure business continuity for organizations amidst lockdown?
Finn: The increasing spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19) has forced employees of many companies to find secure ways to work from their offices at home. AnyDesk offers its users comprehensive support for working from home, including a continuously updated website with useful information for a remote working office setup. In these unprecedented times, remote desktop software offers optimal solutions for digital collaboration. Exchanging data, working together on documents, and communicating with your team has become equivalent to a digital walk over to a colleague's desk. AnyDesk is a reliable, user-friendly, and secure software solution for working from home, and with our easily accessible information and comprehensive support, we are honored for the opportunity to meet the needs of our users in this difficult time.
Rajeev: How does AnyDesk WFH solution meet the expectations of remote workers?
Finn: AnyDesk’s installation package is only 3.2 MB, allowing for quick downloads on any home computer. This also makes the software very scalable. It is also available on virtually any operating system and meets the highest security standards with TLS 1.2 technology. The DeskRT video codec enables near latency-free connections, even in regions with low bandwidths of 100 kB /s or less. In addition, features such as remote printing and VPN ensure that remote access to a work computer lets you feel as if you’re using the device in-person. AnyDesk allows you to collaborate with co-workers with features such as conducting online meetings and presentations or working on the same document with them from any corner of the world. It also allows you to transfer files from one computer to another, through the simplicity of copy and pasting or using the transfer tab to transfer files. In the future, AnyDesk is aiming to provide more collaboration-based features to their users.
Rajeev: What is your current user base across India?
Finn: We have around 3 million users in India.
Rajeev: How are you planning to reach out to a large number of users in the coming months? Do you follow the channel distribution model? If yes, please brief about upcoming channel business.
Finn: We are excited to announce, that owing to our remarkable growth over the last year, we now have a new team dedicated for our resellers. Our partners now have dedicated support and a new AnyDesk Alliance and Partner Program, which is designed to accelerate growth and profitability for them. Though this program, they will enjoy many benefits and there is no cost to join.
Rajeev: How do you take care of the confidential data of your users? How do you assure your clients about the reliability?
Finn: AnyDesk has to support latest security standards to ensure not only confidentiality but also authenticity and integrity of transferred Data. We have very strict concepts as to which type of data is allowed to be stored on our servers. Especially passwords must never be communicated to the AnyDesk server and if stored or transmitted between clients, they always have to be encrypted by techniques liked salted hash algorithms. The most important rule is that even if an attacker gets access to our servers the available data would never be of value and never compromise data of the customer.
For example: AnyDesk uses TLS 1.2, the standard protocol for encrypted communication on the internet. In addition, AnyDesk enforces certificate- based fingerprint verification using 4096bit RSA key, to ensure the authenticity of the session partner. TLS interception is not allowed with AnyDesk. Impersonating is therefore impossible, which makes man-in-the-middle type of attacks futile. Especially for customers from Healthcare, Government and the Banking industry we added support for perfect forward secrecy. Data streams encrypted that way are known to be secure against decryption, even when the private keys of the main server are compromised. That’s a huge advantage! The current encryption mode, verification status, and client fingerprint can be viewed during the established session by hovering the mouse over the lock icon on the status bar.
