Company Computers Not Safe At Home

A warning from Computer Associates that home computers are increasingly vulnerable and threatened -- surprise! -- set me to wondering how many of those computers aren't really home computers at all, but business computers used at home... and, more critically, used at home by people other than the authorized employee.I know, I know... we're not supposed to let that happen, none of us would ever do that, none of our employees or colleagues would ever do that.

Still...

I know -- and you do too-- telecommuters, remote workers and mobile employees who've lent their notebook to a child who needed to write a report, or a spouse who had to do some research on the Net, or just left the machine lying around, powered-up and logged-on.

All it takes is one of these happening once.

Not completely sure what you can do about this 100 percent of the time -- after all, if you could look over your remote staff's shoulders all the time, they wouldn't be remote employees.

But you can certainly reinforce and reinvigorate your remote equipment uasge policies, look into usage monitoring and lockdown software, increase employee awareness of and training in security fundamentals, do what you can to limit the number of machines signed our for less-than-critical remote use.

And you still have to worry about those machines -- and their data -- getting stolen.

CA's Home Internet Threat Report is here.