Lone Star Credit Union's CEO, Becky Reed, was recently interviewed by CU Broadcast where she talked about how Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) allowed their Credit Union to rapidly shift to a completely remote workforce in response to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Pure IT deployed a VDI infrastructure fully throughout Lone Star Credit Union back in 2016. Though they had never planned on having the entire workforce using it to work from home, it was no different than how they worked at the office using a VDI.
Other work from home solutions, like having all the users connect in through a Virtual Private Network (VPN), requires licensing and resources from a firewall that was likely never intended to scale out for this. And if the workstations at home are not company assets, the security of those devices cannot be guaranteed potentially allowing for malware to come across those VPN tunnels throughout your infrastructure. Using a VDI solution or something that allows you to access the screen of the workstations at the credit union is a much safer option. And such solutions can be deployed quickly.
"Our call center has not traditionally worked from home," Reed stated, "we set them up in 30 minutes. And it did not matter what device they had at home." Reed suggests that every credit union look at this type of technology and what it can do for their institution.
VDI can be a useful solution as part of the credit union's Business Continuity Plan. But like most credit unions are finding out, their plans that are geared around what to do in the event of a large scale natural disaster or an IT issue. The plans for a Pandemic are often not part of the current plans. Or if there is a pandemic plan it does not account for some of the unprecedented suggestions, orders, and legislation that has been coming out. So that is putting most credit unions into a mode where they are making up the plans on the fly.
As Reed states in this interview, "Every thing we came up with felt like an over reaction." But they came to the point of asking, what will it hurt? If they send all the employees to work from home and they can call them all back tomorrow, then they get them back in the office or branches. But as we have heard from the White House, if it feels like an over reaction and you are uncomfortable, you are probably on the right track.
Pure IT is so honored to be part of plans at credit unions like Lone Start Credit Union. If you are looking for solutions for this unprecedented time, we are here to strategize and optimize every step of the way.
Checkout this interview on the CU Broadcast: https://www.cubroadcast.com/episodes/2052-lone-stars-becky-reed-explains-how-vdi-tech-has-benefited-credit-unions-remote-workforce
To chat more credit union innovation, please email kyle.stutzman@pureitcuso.com or :
