Reeling in your remote workers

Keeping track of all of your technology can be a big task. If you have a lot of remote workers, be it people who work from home, workers out in the field and on the road, or sales people who travel a lot visiting clients, it becomes even more overwhelming. But losing track of a piece of equipment always ends up being much more of an ordeal.

 

Outside of the initial financial loss from having to replace costly equipment it also means keeping your fingers crossed that whoever lost the technology had complex and unique passwords for not just getting into the device, but with all accounts associated with your business. Imagine ALL your data, including proprietary information, client contacts and accounts, employee info and even financial statements. Now we are talking a nightmare scenario.

 

Some business have embraced the “bring your own device (BYOD)” model. Some might consider this choice to be a way to circumnavigate the cost for the company’s bottom line by not having to provide devices (or replace lost or stolen ones). Besides everyone is using their own phone anyway, right? True, but it also increases the potential for huge security holes into your network.

 

Anytime your company doesn’t manage security settings for devices with access to your network, you’re leaving a giant hole for viruses and malware to march right though.

 

But what makes it so much more risky than using your own devices? When people are using their personal devices, you don’t have any control over what they’re using them for and where they’re using them. For example, it could be the only laptop in a household which means kids using it for school work, playing games, watching videos. It’s so easy to click on a bad link and infect a machine, and if that machine has a direct line into your network you might as well give someone the keys to your home office.

 

Or maybe it’s a cell phone, which has access to a company Office365 account. Does that phone have a passcode on it? If not there is nothing stopping someone from getting into a company Outlook account or Sharepoint and downloading secure company communications.

 

To help you not have so many sleepless nights NW Technology has a few solutions to ease your concerns. We utilize tools such as SonicWall and Ninja as means of not only keeping normal account use monitored, but also being able to see when something out of the ordinary is occurring in your network. These tools allow us to see what devices are connected to your network and how, the last time devices are logged on and by who, as well as updates that are needed that may be compromising your security and more.

 

We also offer mobile device management (MDM) solutions. It allows your business to register all devices to a central control panel, and assign permissions for each mobile device user. For example, you can require passcodes on every device, limit which apps are allowed on the device and pre configure the apps you need on each device before they are handed off to the user, and best of all you can shut it down in the event it is lost or stolen, protecting your data for malicious use.

 

While there’s no replacement for employee education and good company policy, these tools can help keep your mind at ease when your business leaves the office.