Network Nightmare - Unprotected Laptops
With so many staff working at home one or two days a week, and everyone wanting connectivity from anywhere in the world, laptops have become very important tools.
Pretty much every organization now has a VPN to give staff remote access across the Internet, yet only a tiny minority understand how much at risk they are from laptops. If an attacker were able to gain control of a lost or stolen laptop, they would have access to all the information stored on it plus the opportunity to connect to the corporate network via the VPN.
June 25th, 2008 at 4:44 am
Would love to see a write-up on securing remote users and their notebooks. I totally agree aggree with the risks especially when users are no savvy.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:10 am
I’m working in a big company where may happen that laptops could be stolen or lost. Obviously in some cases these may be stored important information about the company itself, its business and even sensitive datas about Customers or employees. A good solution could be an encryption system linked to a biometric sensor for the data stored on the hard disk. For the possibility to connect to the corporate network through VPN is concerned, I think it wouldn’t be somewhat an hard work to have access in an Active Directory authentication-based environment. Anyway I bet there be a cracking solution even in this case but the goal would be completed only before the disabling of the user-account.
In the end I believe the best solution is having no data at all stored locally but just managing virtual-machines (disk-less PC) with all the important information saved on centralized servers.