Connecting securely with conditional access: A glimpse into IT support at Specsavers

Specsavers delivers high-quality optometry and audiology services to its customers. But when it comes to its IT support, it faces a challenge. 

On the one hand, Specsavers needs to fix IT issues before they disrupt the in-store customer experience. On the other hand, it must protect customer privacy. This means close control over who can access devices containing sensitive customer data. 

Conditional access helped Specsavers overcome this challenge. How? Let’s take a closer look.

What is conditional access?

Conditional access is an automated approach to ensure the security and compliance of your IT. It grants or denies users access based on certain criteria. 

That means when a user wants to access a network, device, or application, they need to fulfill a set of conditions. By tying access rights to these conditions, you can prevent unauthorized people from accessing sensitive data. 

Businesses often introduce conditional access as part of their identity and access management (IAM) framework. They use conditional access in different ways. 

These include:

• Requiring multi-factor authentication (MFA) or biometric verification 
• Restricting access to within business hours
• Restricting access to specific networks or physical locations
• Linking access permissions to specific user roles in the organization

Specsavers chose TeamViewer’s remote support solution because it has conditional access built in. This protects sensitive customer data and helps Specsavers IT managers stay in control of all their assets.

What are the benefits of conditional access?

Enhanced security and data protection

This probably won’t come as a surprise to you: The main benefit of conditional access is that it keeps your IT safe.   

By restricting access according to user role, location, and timing, you can prevent unauthorized people from accessing your IT assets. User identity verification, e.g., via MFA, protects your IT infrastructure even when login credentials are compromised.  

Many conditional-access solutions also have monitoring and reporting capabilities. These help you ensure that the right users are accessing the right networks, devices, and apps.  

At Specsavers, the IT management team uses conditional access to provide remote technicians with access to in-store IT assets, like the patient management system. The technicians can only gain access if they fulfill a set of pre-defined criteria. This ensures that sensitive patient health data is always protected from unauthorized access.  

Higher productivity

Conditional access can also help to boost productivity across several parts of your business.   

The most obvious way is by enhancing security. Better security means a lower risk of a data breach and the associated loss of productivity. 

Conditional access also lets you eliminate disruptions in your workflows. By granting instant remote access to authorized technicians, it allows them to address IT problems immediately. This ensures that everyone else can continue working with little or no interruption. 

This is particularly important to the in-store staff at Specsavers. Since they can rely on their support experts to take care of IT issues quickly, they’re able to provide a smooth service experience to their customers. 

Better scalability

Another benefit of conditional access is that it makes it easy to scale your IT operations.  

As your business grows, you need to extend your remote access and support operations to new people, offices, and locations. With people connecting to and from your network from around the world, it can be easy to lose oversight. 

Conditional access addresses this challenge by enabling you to manage access permissions and user roles centrally. That way, you can roll out remote access rights to new users easily, without giving up control.  

With help from TeamViewer, Specsavers could scale its IT support to meet the needs of 32,500 employees in 2,300 stores worldwide. 

Which types of businesses use conditional access?

Businesses in highly regulated industries

Maintaining compliance is a major challenge for most businesses. Nevertheless, some industries, like finance or healthcare, are characterized by particularly tight regulations. 

For instance, the HIPAA Privacy Rule strictly regulates the use of personally identifiable health information. This means that organizations in the healthcare sector need control over who has access to patient or customer data. 

This can be achieved through conditional access. It enables healthcare providers to monitor and manage access permissions across their organization. 

Specsavers implements conditional access in its IT support operations. By ensuring that only authorized persons can access devices containing sensitive customer data, conditional access helps Specsavers meet its regulatory requirements.

Businesses with a diverse global workforce

Nowadays, many businesses have a global workforce that works hybrid or remotely, across a variety of devices. 

Conditional access lets you give your employees the flexibility they need without compromising on security. 

Enable secure remote work by enforcing conditional access policies like multi-factor authentication. Empower your IT support team to solve IT issues anywhere in the world by authorizing them to access user devices remotely. 

Thanks to TeamViewer’s Conditional Access, IT experts at Specsavers can see exactly what’s happening on any in-store device. That way, they can support their colleagues across all 2,300 stores without leaving their office.   

Businesses in super-competitive environments

Providing a smooth customer experience should always be a priority. But if you’re facing high customer expectations and intense competition, it’s a necessity. 

Let’s take the optometry industry as an example. In 2023, economic inflation led more than 25% of British consumers to postpone their eye tests, putting a major strain on the industry. 

To keep attracting customers, it was no longer enough for providers like Specsavers to deliver quality services. They needed to ensure a smooth service experience from start to finish. Disruption due to technical problems wasn’t an option. 

Conditional access can help businesses keep their operations running smoothly. It doesn’t just enable quick and secure remote support. It also limits user access rights and can thus help you avoid operation or configuration errors. 

Summary

Conditional access supports you in several ways to meet your business goals. By centrally managing access rights and tying them to precise criteria, you can strengthen your security, improve productivity, and ensure compliance. 

In highly regulated industries, businesses use conditional access to ensure data compliance. Conditional access can also deliver secure remote access in global work environments. At the same time, it gives you a competitive edge by eliminating disruptions and creating a smooth customer experience. 

Specsavers is a great example of a company that used conditional access to streamline its processes and provide better service.