Telecommuting in IT grows – security worries grow too

by Steve Ragan - Apr 1 2008, 16:30

IT is growing leaps and bounds encouraging workers to skip the trip to the office and work from home. The growth applies to both the private sector and government sector, however this growth is also making some IT managers worry over security.

A report from CDWG (Government branch of CDW), details the result of a national survey which included almost two thousand participants, end-user employees, and the Information Technology (IT) professionals who support them.

The report shows that employers have taken significant steps to expand telecommuting initiatives, and private-sector telecommuting adoption is approaching the Federal level, with fourteen percent of private-sector employees telecommuting, compared to seventeen percent of Federal employees.   However, IT professionals in both sectors cited security as their top concern about telecommuting, with forty-two percent of Federal IT professionals and twenty-seven percent of private-sector IT professionals indicating that it is their most pressing challenge.

“More stringent IT security policies are controlling telework expansion in the Federal government,” said Andy Lausch, senior director of Federal sales for CDWG. “Federal agencies recognize that IT security and telework can co-exist, and they are carefully managing telework programs hand-in-hand with layered technology solutions that protect data and networks while enabling the increased productivity and flexibility that telework affords.”

While more than eighty percent of those who took the survey said they are comfortable with their network security, the survey revealed a gap in awareness that could introduce security weaknesses. Twenty-one percent of Federal employees and thirty-one percent of private-sector employees say they are not aware of their organization’s corporate security policies, potentially opening the door to behaviors that risk security breaches.

Most of the security people who support offsite workers will enforce different policies depending on the nature of network access. The overall issue with remote workers is trust. If the company can not trust the worker, they need either to remove them, or allow them to only work out of an office.

Report: http://newsroom.cdwg.com/features/feature-03-31-08.html

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