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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.'"
I read the whole article, and I couldn't find any instance of "finger pointing" by companies, the press, or the government. Who, exactly, is pointing fingers? This sounds like an article about a non-issue, if you ask me. I understand that many telecommuters want to continue telecommuting, but the article provides no information as to who this nebulous group of "finger pointers" are, or even if they really exist.
Because of these type of events, I am now subjected to running everything encyrpted now by the company I currently have a contract for. Plus they force daily backups in case the laptop is stolen/lost. At first I thought it would be a hassle and there are some minor delays when the backup is taking place (seems to run at most inappropriate times), but so far I have gotten used to it and it really hasn't impacted my work. If this is the price I have to pay to telework, than so be it, it is better than having to trek the 80+ miles to the office every day.
The real problem I have is the perception that when you "work from home" you are not really working, so I have to work extra hard so that people think I am working at all.
Totally, most of the problems could be mitigated by good security practices.
What about encrypting the whole workspace that the user works on? For example, take a VMWare image with a Windows or Linux environment and all the apps that the user needs to use for this sensitive information, put it on an encrypted virtual drive volume and there it is.
It dosen't seem that these computers are the target of people who want the data, or even know that it's there, they just want the hardware... But it would be a good idea to make it basically impossible for the casual or professional snoop to get at this data.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
The VA issue was the dude had stuff on his laptop. This is where software-as-a-service is the answer. A centralized, secure (as it can be) place for data. I think its insane and stupid in this day and age to have any sensitive material on a laptop. Its almost an archaic way of of thinking nowadays. Look at Salesforce.com - they have the right idea.
Write once - access anywhere if you have the credentials and online access.
Ive been telecommuting for over 5 years now and Im about to give up.
People are resistant on working in ways to accomodate telelcommuting. People will wait for me to visit the office..even if thats many weeks - rather than pick up the phone.
I also find that when people want to play politics - you are at a severe disadvantage when telecomuting.
Every time management changes you have to reconvince them its viable and I have decided over all that
Thats despite the fact that I work in an IT department for a large vibrant and successful company that prides itself on its forward thinking.
So after 5 years - Im giving up - not for technical reasons.. which I have been able to manage one way or another - but because the culture - even in IT is just not accepting of telecommuters and in fact disdvantages them.
Eh?...would these mythical organizations also be the same organizations that are stampeding towards off-shoring everything but the CEO? If businesses can justify offshoring all forms of engineering and be satisifed why can't they handle telecommuters?
The first time my company allowed workers to telecommute, they apparently had some folks who took that to mean they could loaf and not actually, you know, work.
Some people got fired and management adopted a very strong but unwritten policy that telecommuting was completely disallowed. The telecommuting fallout had happened a couple years before I started working there but management was stil upset by the time I was hired. I learned the hard way when I had to come to work three times in the middle of an ice storm that should have allowed for some flexible remote working. No way.
The irony is that the regular workers who show up in person at the office spend a lot of the day loafing around, playing computer games, surfing, wandering from cube to cube chatting, and generally not doing, you know, work. Management sees it but doesn't do much about it. But do this on company time where they can't see it? ouch.
Really, what is more important, saving the planet or a few million VA records. I think the number one reason to support telecommuting is so people can live in the area of their choosing and still earn a decent wage. Commuting is wasteful of both time and energy. I can't believe the sierra club and greenpeace don't push telecommuting more.
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They develop culture the same way sites like slashdot develop their own unique cultures... they build commitment by hiring committed individuals.
As a telecommuter working for an organization composed largely of telecommuters, I can safely say it's not for everyone. But at the same time... disgusting, Office Space-esque cubicle culture... that's not for everyone either.
I live a thousand miles away from any of my co-workers. I've never met anyone in my company. We communicate by phone, by email, by IM... and it just works. Sure, we don't have a company softball team that way, but we also don't have all the bullshit office politics I've heard some people who work outside the home talk about.
I know people who've done the telecommuting thing and hated it, and couldn't wait to get out of it. For me though, I'm never going to work outside the home again if I can help it.
I've read that it's easier to get passed over for promotions, raises, and plum assignments because of this (the not seen or heard thing). True?
I've been writing IT articles since 1987. In those 19 years, I've visited my publisher's office exactly once and I've met exactly one of the editors I've worked for.
Tech Public Policy stuff
What benefit do you gain from 3 layers of NAT and 2 proxies other than a ton of lag? A single well configured version of each should surely be sufficient.
Just taking a swag at it...
Home network
Corporate network, likely main corporate domain and/or remote access point.
Corporate subnet, likely his corporate sub-domain.
That's easily 3 NAT's and a couple proxies, only the first under his control.
Am I close?
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Of course how effective you can be as a telecommuter depends on your profession. I work in IT and have been working 100% telecommute for about 7 years and it has worked out just fine. I can get a lot more done with email and phone than I ever could with face-to-face meetings. I can put my thoughts together concisely in an email and avoid the smalltalk. I can also keep working while I'm listening in on a conference call (thanks to the mute button) and multitask more than one project at a time. It's not uncommon for me to work on a project with the project leader in Arkasas, the DBA in Missippi, the customer in Texas and the data center in Louisianna so the work environment is disparate anyway. Face-to-face is fine and beneficial for gaining the comfort level of the employer, but if you can gain their trust with solid results it really makes no difference. As a bonus, I'm able to charge cheaper rates because I don't have a lot on travel expenses.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
"The data on a laptop cannot do harm if it reads like gibberish"
Before, or after we install the keylogger, take a couple days off, then scoop up the laptop?
I can remember the only time a company let me telecommute: I broke one leg, the other knee, and shattered a hip in a car accident, and they gave me an LA-36 Decwriter II, an acoustic-coupler(!) modem, had an extra phone line put in during my convalescence, and whenever I needed paper or ribbon I had them the next morning.
"Encryption", as such, consisted of mixing-up the data lines on the parallel-side(s) of the UARTs (8!=40320, back then they thought _that_ was hot sh*t; but I thought that was a pain in the *ss because I could only talk to the one modem at work and nothing else).
Good times though (except for the medical).
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
One thing I notice is it allows people who don't volunteer to fade in the background... Guy I work with has the same title as me (network engineer) but has been doing it for 5 years longer and actually reports to another network engineer who then reports to my boss (if that makes sense). He doesn't volunteer to take projects so people forget about him and don't offer him projects. It really requires you to make an effot to be noticed. That said it's working ok for me but I make an effort to try and make contact with my boss every other day.
Only works if you have a network connection. When you're working on, say, a construction site in the early stages, with a very mobile workforce, it's a little tough to use the VPN. And a cellphone modem doesn't work very well three stories underground.
This is very interesting to me. I work for a company that provides financial software. Our security is almost non-existant. I'm about the only person who could impliment any serious security, but it has been put to the bottom of my priority list by the boss. Makes me sick sometimes. Anyone that has worked for our company, or even one of our customer's companies, could EASILY rip someone off pretty bad. Not to mention completely fubar a load of businesses in one shot.
:)
Maybe I should force feed some of these articles to my boss.
Can all fish swim?
Or alternately, I can't imagine that the personnell retention rate of those security firms is very good: doesn't seem like it would be very hard to get someone on the inside to help you out a little bit.
It also probably wouldn't be hard to get a mole onto one of these security teams. Like you said, they don't have any special training coming in (military, police, etc). They're just department store types, and I can't imagine that the qualifications are much more than department store qualifications -- including simple "lack of criminal record".
For organized crime, I'm sure a little identity theft wouldn't be beyond them. John Smith steals Arthur Dent's papers, gets the job, and the police knock on Arthur's door when they realize it was an inside job.
Seems pretty basic to me.
Similar to what we have. Cisco VPN, connected to terminal server, terminal server. Cut, paste, and print disabled. External network (including home LAN) and local hard drive access disabled while connected to the VPN. Traffic between your PC and the VPN is encrypted. There's presently no way to get data from the corporate network to your home PC, and thus no risk of data loss. While there are holes in it, you need to look hard for them. They aren't the kind any user will stumble across accidentally or via stupidity.
On the other hand, people with corporate laptops don't have the same restrictions, and many people are perfectly able to use a USB key fob into their work PCs. These kinds of oversights defeat the purpose...