Protecting Your Corporate Network from Your Employee's Home Systems

In addition to the protection provided by a strong perimeter firewall, a security conscious corporation will often have strict control over the systems placed on employee desktops. This may include anti-virus software, patch management, configuration management, and removing the ability for employees to install unauthorized software. Maintaining this level of desktop control is not trivial for the Information Technology (IT) organization within a corporation, but for company owned systems located on a corporate campus it can be done. The challenge becomes much greater when employee home systems are allowed to access the corporate network via a Virtual Private Network (VPN). These systems spend most of their time connected to the wild, wild Internet and the rest of their time directly connected to your corporate network. In addition to work related activities they may be used for many other purposes by any number of people. While direct control of home systems is not always possible, there are steps a corporation can take to ensure that a worm or hacker does not gain access to the corporate network by compromising a home system.