Digital Nomads Need To Take Control Of Their Own Security

by Chris O'Donnell / Oct 25

I am a digital nomad. I’ve telecommuted from home and worked from various coffee shops between appointments for about 4 years. I’m a sales executive, not an IT person or a developer. Those folks should know how to maintain a secure computer. Corporate IT simply can not control all those laptops being used by remote employees. They have no control over how they are used, where they are used, or what software gets installed. If you are a digital nomad it is (or should be) incumbent on you to take control of your machine and learn enough to not be a menace to the corporate IT support staff. If I was in corporate IT I might consider making it a quasi requirement that remote users get educated enough to be at least partly self-sufficient. If you need to call the help desk for help rebooting your wireless router you are not going to be a productive remote employee.

Corporate can support that by providing training that enables remote users to make smart decisions, and by making smart decisions themselves about what goes on the remote laptops. However, that probably doesn’t happen often. That said, safe computing is not rocket science. As a digital nomad I’ve found that just a few simple things can dramatically improve the security and stability of a remote corporate laptop, making life easier for both end users and IT support staff.

1. Use Up to date anti-virus software. You would think this would be obvious, but I’ve seen a frightening number of corporate owned laptops with expired AV applications. Operating a company owned computer running a MS operating system without antivirus should be a punishable offense. Laptop security is just as important as company car security, and leaving the keys in teh car while you run into the donut shop is a definate no-no.
2. Use Firefox as the primary browser. It’s free, and it can auto update just like IE. However, it is inherently more secure because it is not tightly tied into the MS application stack. The improved standards compliance from Firefox may also lead to less support calls complaining that some web site doesn’t work for the user.
3. Use anything other than Outlook for email. I don’t allow Outlook on the computers I own, and I don’t use Outlook on my work laptop. I use Outlook Web Access when I need to do something with my Outlook calendar. I use Thunderbird for email. You can either connect to the exchange server via IMAP or POP, or you can go even further. I use Gmail to pull all my corporate email into a dedicated work Gmail account, then use IMAP from Thunderbird with the Gmail account. This gives me far better virus and spam filtering then the rest of company gets from the Exchange tools. It also gives me access to all my mail from any Internet connected computer. Of course, this all depends on corporate IT allowing POP or IMAP access to the server.
4. Don’t open any attachment you are not sure about. Again, that should be common sense by now, but it’s not.

That’s it. Follow those 4 steps with your corporate laptop and you’ll be more secure than many of the office dwellers in your company.

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