Thursday 6 November 2008

Telecommuting

I've been working from home a lot more since my replacement hip operation a year ago. It started as a necessity, but I found it very productive and stuck with it. Now I've got to the point where I miss my colleagues and the general office banter, so am adjusting my routine to include more days in the office (it's only 15 minutes away, so not much of an effort). Thinking about this, I remembered a wonderful sequence of Dilbert cartoons.

However, as more and more organisations give employees the flexibility to work at home, I can't help wondering about the impact on security ... unencrypted (or WEP-encrypted) home wireless networks ... kids playing with company laptops ... unencrypted hard drives ... no clear desk policies ... poor physical security ... and an increasing trend for staff to use their home computers to connect to company VPNs. Scary stuff.

Perhaps we ought to consider expanding ethical hacking and audit to include home networks and PCs?