Home Sweet Home Office

 2008-10-12 17:26:43 

A home office is sometimes used as extension of the real office - where you work at your day job. Being allowed to bring work home is a privilege. You have been trusted with company information and you owe it to your employer to respect their data and to keep it safe at all times.

Working at home with company data at risk is a good argument that a laptop should be used specifically for work. It is portable, it has the ability to connect to company networks and it is private. Someone other than you could access sensitive company data on a family computer.

Even when using a secure computer the data may not be safe if your home wireless network is not secure. If you are in doubt either hire a professional to check it out or test it yourself. If you are not prompted for a password when connecting to your network it is not secure. If your password is easily guessed that is just as bad. 

All papers and computer disks that are work related should be contained in a bag or drawer that can be locked when you are away from it. Data backup should be a normal practice and some particularly sensitive data should be encrypted.

Discarded paperwork or reports should be shredded and not just tossed into the trashcan. Remember that once the garbage is set on the curb it is part of the public domain. It is not out of the realm of possibility that something you threw away could end up in a competitor’s hands.

Do your homework before bringing company data home.