NAKED working may be the stuff of fantasy but flexible working is now a corporate reality, improving staff and student productivity and supporting environmental policies. The near ubiquity of broadband combined with a transformation in the reliability and speed of wireless communications has transformed the viability of remote working.
However, flexible working is also proving to be a major risk as organisations struggle to impose adequate data storage, back-up and security policies for remote workers. With increasing volumes of valuable data stored on laptops and home PCs in danger of being lost, and students and staff facing the risk of lost or damaged equipment, the flexible working nirvana is losing its shine.
Home Working Revolution
Schools, colleges and universities are increasingly creating flexible contracts for staff, providing students with laptops and encouraging students to access the corporate network and data from home. The flexibility offered by reliable remote working is delivering improved staff morale, driving down employee churn and transforming the working pattern of students.
Yet whilst offering many clear benefits, ad hoc policies for remote working also create significant risks. After years of investment in data back up and security within the corporate IT infrastructure, organisations are apparently allowing vital data to leave the organisation unsecured, unprotected and un-backed up in what is becoming an anarchic remote working environment.
Exposed
More often than not, organisations are delivering laptops and VPN access with no more than generic LAN-based policies for regular back ups, security downloads and data synchronisation. They have no visibility of whether or not these activities are carried out and no way of imposing control.
The result is intermittent local back ups at best, given a tendency to override data synchronisation with the corporate network to save time and sporadic virus/security checks. Users also forget to turn off other systems before using the VPN, leading to back-door access to corporate LAN, increasing security risks.
More critically, any damage or theft of these remote devices will result in complete data loss.
Uncovered
Larger organisations are imposing complete control by combining VPN access with automatic security updates, back up and synchronisation whenever the remote machine logs onto the corporate network. Furthermore, remote access to corporate applications is often severely restricted.
However, even such tightly defined policies can cause problems as they significantly reduce the ability for staff and students to work effectively.
Additionally, synchronisation and updated backups/security upgrades are only conducted when the user is connected to the corporate network because the majority of tools automating these processes are LAN-based. The result is that remote workers are left unprotected when working on their standard Internet connections.
The only way organisations can truly impose control over remote workers is to adopt web-based technology that provides monitoring and support irrespective of location across every wired and wireless Internet connection.
Centralised Control
Real time monitoring ensures visibility of whether or not staff and students are following back up and security procedures remotely.
Using such a model data can be streamed to an off site repository, or backed up onto a local device controlled remotely from within the organisation. Security scans and updates can be scheduled and regular snapshots of the entire machine can be made to ensure that in the event of a failure, the device can be remotely rebuilt and reinstalled within minutes. Should a user require additional functionality to support specific requirements, this can be achieved within seconds.
Real time monitoring also provides immediate insight into inappropriate remote behaviour, such as the installation of new software or hardware devices. Critically, the organisation can monitor these remote machines using the same tools and console that manage the existing internal infrastructure, minimising the cost of enabling a remote workforce.
Flexible Risk
Today, too many in-house and outsourced IT teams are veering from imposing excessive control that constrains productivity to no control, leading to remote data anarchy. Unless this risk is addressed, organisations will begin to rapidly rethink the value of remote working, undermining human resources and environmental policies.
It is only by leveraging web-based tools that educational institutions can achieve the remote monitoring and automated back up and security required to cost effectively bring remote working back into the controlled environment of the corporate infrastructure.
