Naked home workers may be the stuff of fantasy but flexible working is now a corporate reality, improving staff retention and supporting corporate environmental policies. The near ubiquity of broadband, combined with a transformation in the reliability and speed of wireless communications, has transformed the viability of home and remote working.
However, flexible working is also a major business risk as organisations struggle to impose adequate data storage, back-up and security policies for remote workers. With increasing volumes of critical data on laptops and home PCs in danger of being lost to the business, it is the home worker’s laptop – which is rarely backed up or secured – that is truly naked.
More often than not, organisations are delivering laptops and VPN access with no more than generic LAN-based policies for regular backups, security downloads and data synchronisation. They have no visibility of whether these tasks are done, and no way to impose control. The result is intermittent local backups at best, a tendency to override data synchronisation with the corporate network to save time, and sporadic virus/security checks. Users also often forget to turn off other systems before using the VPN opens back-door access to the corporate LAN, adding significant security risks to the organisation.
In far too many cases, vital corporate information is kept on unprotected on remote machines. Damage or theft of these remote devices will result in complete data loss – at potentially huge operational cost. The remote worker could be left for days without the tools to work, while the vital documents and information are permanently lost.
What’s the solution? Larger organisations with deep pockets are imposing complete control by combining VPN access with automatic security updates, backup and synchronisation whenever the remote machine logs onto the corporate network. Furthermore, access to corporate applications when outside the network is often severely restricted to further safeguard the infrastructure.
However, even such tightly defined policies can cause problems. By only allowing heavily restricted access to corporate applications and significantly reducing the facilities available on portable devices, organisations are leaving senior knowledge workers unable to perform effectively. The result is a gradual policy creep, with IT changing access rules and machine functionality on a case by case basis, undermining the corporate policy and adding risk in the process.
In addition, synchronisation and updated backups/security upgrades are done only when the user is connected to the corporate network, because most tools automating these processes are LAN based. The result is that remote workers are left unprotected when working on their standard internet connections. The only way organisations can truly impose control over the remote workforce and protect data outside the corporate network is to adopt web-based technology that provides monitoring and support irrespective of location across every wired and wireless internet connection.
Organisations can regain control over the growing band of flexible workers by extending internet-based monitoring and support of devices from within the IT infrastructure to every remote device. Combining real time security downloads with automated back-ups transforms the safety and reliability of the remote working model. Even if an organisation opts not to enforce automation, real time monitoring ensures visibility of whether staff follow backup and security procedures remotely.
Using such a model data can either be streamed to an off site repository, or backed up onto a local device controlled remotely from within the corporate business, while security scans and updates can be scheduled and enforced should a machine be off line at the scheduled time. Furthermore, regular snapshots of the entire machine mean the device can be remotely rebuilt and reinstalled in minutes in the event of failure.
Real time monitoring also provides immediate insight into inappropriate remote behaviour, such as the installation of new software or hardware devices. These remote machines can be monitored using the same tools and console already used to manage the existing internal infrastructure.
With ever growing demand for flexible working policies that embrace home working, hot-desking and the use of satellite offices, the pyjama-clad employee is a growing breed. But if they are to continue delivering corporate value, organisations must address the dangers.
*Philip Sansom is senior VP of Jersey based managed services specialist Kaseya
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers