Wireless access has become a way of life and company I.T. departments are having to deal with increasing pressure to support wireless home workers.

Six Ways to Mitigate Risk From Wireless Home Workers:
February 26, 2007 (Computerworld) — Here are some tips from research firm Gartner for ensuring that home workers’ wireless networks won’t harm the corporate network or expose sensitive company information

Listed below are the six tips (details on each can be found in the referenced article.):

  1. Turn off the service set identifier broadcast on all internal, nonpublic, nonguest access points
  2. Migrate to WPA2-compatible wireless LAN network interface cards (NIC), wireless drivers, supplicants and access points on all new purchases.
  3. Install a personal firewall in every laptop with a wireless NIC.
  4. Keep WLAN card drivers up to date.
  5. Turn off peer-to-peer/ad hoc networking.
  6. Don’t allow wireless and wired NICs to be active at the same time on a client system.

In addition to these local user wireless client steps there are many steps that I.T. Departments can take to help ensure a more secure access by remote client computers. These steps should include:

  • Only allow access using company-owned equipment that has been “secured”, not the users own home computer.
  • If using a VPN, automatically check client virus update level, where applicable, when the computer attempts to access the company network.
  • When possible only allow users to access company network as a virtual machine using encryption.
  • Enforce secure passwords and utilize a hardware security key before users can access the company network.
  • Prevent storage or transfer of company data on/to users local clients.
  • Discourage use of USB or thumb drives.

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