Dealing With Laptops in a Business Network?

lanimreT asks: "Notebooks are a large problem for IT managers. They carry viruses and other malware back into the network and are less reliable than desktop PCs for more than one reason. Yet, every employee MUST have one for his job. How have other IT managers dealt with the various problems that notebooks create?"

Comments

Here's a start for you.

[grub]

Put your laptops on a DMZ-like subnet. Don't allow unrestricted access from that to the rest of the LAN. ie.: only allow them access to your servers and other necessary resources. If they don't need to access Bertha's PC in Accounts Receivables then block it.

Block spyware sites on your firewall and log it. If you see a laptop trying to get to $SPYWARESITE you know they've installed crap. Go remove it.

Make sure they have antivirus and antispyware stuff installed, up to date and running. A lot of people turn it off because "it slows my machine down"

Ideally you won't let them have admin access. Far too often laptops show up with Kazaa or other shit installed because they let their kids play with the machines at home. Bad move, it's company property with company information but many people think the other way around. Assuming you're the IT manager you should have every right to remove such crap. Check your policies first.

Very important: Make a log of everything you have to fix If and when you start to enforce policy you need hard data to back up your actions.