Better Safe Than Sorry: Securing Your Data as a Telecommuter

There are many, many perks to being a telecommuter or remote worker. But there are challenges as well, and one of those is the risk you take when you have your clients' sensitive data on your computer. As a remote worker, the data you store on your machine can be your livelihood, and losing it could be extremely painful financially and professionally. But just as important as not losing it is not letting it get into the wrong hands. It's amazing how much information is worth these days, and data security is paramount. So what can you do to protect your clients' data while it resides on your computer? h3. Hide it on the internet One option for those who know they'll always have remote access to a server is to keep all their data off their workstation. The primary drawback to consider with this option is that a loss of connection will prevent you from working. Secondly, lag could become a problem too. Even with today's networks, working off entirely remote files can be quite slow. But if this still sounds like a good options for you, consider a "WebDAV":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV. This appears on your machine like a local drive but it exists in a cloud of computers. This solution will also come with regular backups and redundancy in case the drive it is on crashes. You might also consider the "MobileMe":http://www.me.com suite of hosted file/calendar/task synchronization provided by Apple. At first I thought MobileMe was a great idea, because all your files are accessible to you from any machine. Unfortunately, during the 30-day trial period it never did finish syncing my 15GBs of files, so I opted not to pay for the service after all. Other good options include "Dropbox":http://www.dropbox.com or "Jungle Disk":https://www.jungledisk.com. h3. Lock it up One of my favourite perks of telecommuting: working on a beach while your coworkers are stuck in the cube farm. To do this, you'll need to keep your files on your machine. But what if someone grabs your laptop while you're getting a refill on that margarita? You definitely don't want to have to call every client to tell them to change their passwords, so you should really lock your machine. First and foremost, the account to turn the machine on needs a password (and a good one!). Next, your sleep and screen saver need to have passwords on them. Basically, any time you sit back down at your computer, you should need to re-authenticate yourself. h3. Encrypt it in the Vault A locked down machine has its benefits, but in reality the data on it is still vulnerable. On a Mac, this is quite easy to fix. Under System Preferences hit the Security section. A few options come into play here. Under the General tab, ensure the "Disable automatic login" and "Use secure virtual memory" are checked (as seen in the image), otherwise the rest of your work will be pointless. Next, the FileVault tab will allow you to turn on encryption for your home directory. So only when you are logged in will you be able to see the contents of your home directory. If you're one of the those people who routinely forgets your password, perhaps this isn't a good option for you (there's no recovery if you forget your password). So now that you can be sure your data won't end up on the black market, you can sleep easy at night. Enjoy being a telecommuter!