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INDUSTRY NEWS


19 May 2008

Companies encouraged towards remote working


IT managers have been urged to support more flexible working practices, following on from National Work from Home Day last week, it has been reported.

With an estimated five million workers foregoing their daily commute on Thursday (May 15th, 2008), the beginning of Work Wise Week, which aims to promote smarter working practices, an expert has argued that firms should use this week to test run remote working practices, according to IT Week.

The website reports that Tony Chen, chief executive of enterprise communications provider Aastra, said: "Remote working is not a trust thing but a matter of confidence. Business leaders are driving this – it's here to stay."

It has been argued that remote working allow employees to achieve a more attractive work-life balance and subsequently increase their productivity, but security firm ScanSafe warned that it can also leave enterprise networks vulnerable to attack.

It urged IT managers embarking on remote working experiments this week to ensure that all staff members are running up to date code and signatures, and to enforce acceptable usage policies with content security tools.

While security concerns are often raised when employees take laptops or PDAs out of the office, technology can be used to allow remote workers access to corporate resources without storing any information locally on mobile devices, according to What PC? Magazine.

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