Jul. 10, 2008 - Don't get too casual on Friday--or any day....
One of the tech guys that I've always thought was one of the smartest guys around is Matt Cohen,Chief Technologist at Clareity Consulting. Matt's always had wise, very practical advice for me and he's a pretty interesting thinker when it comes to new ideas. I remember one very provocative conversation we had in the back of the room right after a vendor's ill-conceived 'product release'...but that's another story for another time.
Matt has an interesting blog article on telecommuting and security which every AE, MLS Director, and probably most brokers should study. As I was reading it, I was totally amazed at how far-reaching this issue could be for anyone employing people who access work computers from a remote location.
Of course Realtors have been telecommuters for a long time, and more and more brokers are cutting back on the bricks and mortar overhead expenses and encouraging people to work outside the office. Over recent years, there have been lots of business models for this kind of brokerage structure, and some have been quite successful. Now, as Matt points out, with rising gas prices, work-at-home is even more desirable.
In CDW Corporation's 2008 Telework Security Report, the trends are clear: over 76% of private sector employers provide support for remote workers, up more than 25% over the previous year. And over 40% of workers said that the ability to telecommute would significantly impact their decisions about taking a new job or staying in their old one.
There are additional advantages—my daughter, who works for a non-profit organization in Washington, DC, is a case in point. Her employer encourages work-at-home days. Work interruptions in DC are frequent—a guy driving a tractor onto the White House lawn can shut down the total Metro system for hours. A good thunderstorm can close the Beltway for an entire afternoon. As a result, companies build telework into their employee schedules—they know that matter what the disaster, work can be maintained with continuity if telework is an option for employees. And for three-quarters of the private sector workforce in America, it is.
The problem with this is, of course, security—just ask any IT geek. And the first item of security is verifying a remote users identity regardless of what computer she is using to access the remote database. MLSs should be worrying about this, and some of them are and finding that there several emerging solutions to that problem.
However, as Matt Cohen points out, every AE and every broker should be asking themselves the question: "Does my organization have appropriate information security policies and practices to address the risks of telecommuting?"
Matt offers some specific questions, the answers to which should be in your organization's policy. And we as management need to go one step further: the CDW report indicates 21% of governmental employees and 31% of private sector employees don't know if their employer has a security policy, let alone what's in it.
Policies about which no one knows are useless, about as useless as no policy at all. Guess we could get started on this issue at all levels of organized real estate. Begin with Matt's blog.
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