Austin Lane

Do you have employees that work at home? Do they often need access to files and folders on their computers or the servers in the office? Do you have an easy-to-use and secure method for your employees to access those files and folders on the office computers?

If you answered yes to either one of the first two questions, then you should have answered yes to the third. If you do not have a VPN or some other encrypted mechanism for employees that work remotely to access your files in the office, then there is a chance that they will email the needed files to their home email account. What issues arise from this practice? The following list is from Executive Legal Adviser in an article entitled Gmail, IMs and Company Information written by Peter S. Vogel:

• Employees send emails containing company information to their personal email accounts on email systems outside the company’s own system.
• Doing so raises a number of troubling issues surrounding protection of confidential information and avoiding violations of securities law.
• New federal rules governing litigation make preserving electronic evidence critical.

What can you do to keep your confidential information secure while allowing employees to work remotely? You can have your network administrators setup a secure VPN that will allow your remote employees connect to your office network securely. Also, you should create a company policy that forbids employees sending or receiving any email containing company information on any outside email or instant messaging service.

If your company needs help setting up remote access, please contact Austin Lane Technologies, Inc..

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 9:42 am and is filed under Construction, Email, Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.