Slashdot Mirror
Telecommuting Backlash
coondoggie writes to tell us that advocates of the telecommute have stood up against recent finger pointing based on recent telecommuter screw ups. One of the more notable screw up was the recent loss of many veteran's personal information by a VA employee. From the article: "Despite years of growing acceptance, telework still has such detractors. 'The No. 1 challenge is cultural inertia. It's motivating the middle managers, teaching them a new way of doing work,' O'Keeffe says. 'It's the Luddite mentality that we need to change.'"
The problem here isn't telecommuting, it is bad security practices and these problems probably would have happened one way or another, whether it's over a SSH tunnel, VPN, or local on the lan.
Telecommuting isn't the problem. Ineffective security policies are.
It's possible to set up secure connections between a telecommuter's computer and a secure server. Encrypted tunnels for VPN or something like that. Encrypt data on the laptop hard drive - if you even permit sensitive data to be stored there at all.
But until government and corporations are seriously committed to taking the measures necessary to keep private data secure, incidents like this will keep happening, whether it's due to a stolen telecommuting laptop or a server that gets broken into.
"The analyst whose laptop was stolen from his house was not a teleworker, just someone who took work home with him."
/., but everyone I know, even in the IT industry has to go and show some flesh at a physical location to get paid. I'd love to telecommute but to be honest, it's mostly impractical for most people who have to engage with humans to get their job done effectively.
On what grounds are you going to detract from telecommuting in that statement? Every worker I know a)has a latop and b)moves it around. I don't think any of us would call ourselves telecommuters in any sense of the word. The fact we take work home, on 'theivable' media isn't an argument against telecommuting, it's an argument for us not taking work home!
I know there are telecommuters on
The next question for me is, who is this backlash against?
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
Interesting article. It pretty much notes what's being said here - good telework requires good policies, good enforcement, and good planning.
In my last job I telecommuted for a good 3-5 months until I left. The company had excellent policies and security. There wasn't a single reported incident of data theft from our division in the two-and-a-half years I was there. I was definitely more productive, and I was also better able to plan around illness, holidays, and emegencies.
It's all about good policy. A company without telecommuters is still insecure if it has a crap IT Risk policy.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
I had a laptop stolen in a secured office building. Each floor required a badge, as did the lobby. A laptop at home is no more or less safe than a laptop at work. In fact, my house is probably harder to break in to than most office buildings.
One thing I personally feel is you don't develop a bond with your co-workers if you don't see them face to face. I'm a network engineer for a large fortune 500, I have a company laptop with VPN software that I can use to work from home if I want. Occasionally I do, especially if I need to watch a sick child but still want to get some work done. Otherwise I try to go into my office and be present for face to face meetings whenever possible. My direct boss lives and works 300 miles from my office and I rarely see him, maybe 6 times a year. We talk over the phone and email frequently but we don't have the kind of boss/employee relationship that I've had in the past. Very hard to feel comfortable working/trusting other people when they seem almost like strangers to you.
I don't see anyone asking the question: "what effect does telecommuting have on productivity?" I work in the R&D arm of a major multinational corporation and the projects I work on are highly collaborative. I can often accomplish more in 15-30 minutes of face-to-face conversation with a colleague than in an hour or more over the phone or video conference, even with fancy collaboration tools like Lotus Sametime and Microsoft NetMeeting.
The backlash against telecommuting is not just security related - it's cultural. How can an organization stay fresh and bring on new people who can learn from mentors and rapidly come up the learning curve if all the senior engineers are tucked up at home coding in their PJs? How will that organization build a culture, build commitment, build team spirit? There have to be some limits or a company will stagnate. security issues can easily be handled with better technology over time but I don't think the cultural ones are so easily dealt with.
"Telecommuting" means working away from the normal office environment. This guy was a "teleworker." Sure, he isn't NORMALLY a teleworker (e.g. he usually works out of the office). But he took work home. He was telecommuting. There would have been little chance of this data being stolen had he not "telecommuted."
Telecommuting has drawbacks. The number one issue is that the home is not usually a good environment for work. This includes issues of safety and data security. Operations are at risk if you do not take sufficient precautions.
One interesting solution to this is thin client computing. I've experimented with Sun Ray thin clients that connect over a broadband connection back to a server. No data is stored on the thin client. All it really transmits is pixels and keyboard and mouse clicks (encrypted, too). That's the right way to approach this. Never store data away from the people paid to protect it (then make sure those people do a good job).
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom