Teleworker Security Design

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Defining the Teleworker Environment
• Expected Threats
• Threat Mitigation
• Identity Considerations
• Network Design Considerations
• Software-Based Teleworker Design
• Hardware-Based Teleworker Design
• Design Evaluations

We find that there are approximately 28 million Americans who are teleworkers that work at home, at a telework center or satellite office, work on the road, or some combination of these.

International Telework Association and Council, 2001 Telework America Summary

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson's Law, 1957

Teleworker security continues to be a difficult problem for many organizations. Toward the end of the 1990s, it was still most common for teleworkers to access their organization's network over dial-up lines or private Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) connections. Today, many organizations are pressed to offer their users broadband connectivity or other Internet-accessible connection options. By using the IP network as a means of transporting teleworker traffic, the edge of your IP network is extended to include the teleworker systems, wherever they may be. Your organization's security is impacted not just by the security of the systems remotely accessing your network but also by the security of the location from which that access originates. This chapter presents teleworker secure network designs in the same format as done for the edge and campus networks in the previous two chapters.