RE: Home laptops on a corporate network

["Crawley, Jim" <Jim.Crawley () yrbrands com>]

        Personally I think you're better off going with a solution such
as Citrix with Secure Gateway.  That way the person will only have a
http/ssl connection to the secure gateway server, don't allow mapping of
local drives, force everything to be off the server.  The people who
bring their laptops in can be put on a separate VLAN with the only
communication allowed to the corporate network via the Secure Gateway
box.

        I've been pushing hard for something like this for people who
want to work from home in my current company.  Currently it's just the
Cisco VPN client giving them full access to our global network which
imho is shocking.  I think I'm finally making some leeway in to
convincing people to allow me to set this up at least for our office and
I'm expecting to get the go-ahead in the not too distant future.
 

-----Original Message-----
From: listbounce () securityfocus com [mailto:listbounce () securityfocus com]
On Behalf Of Petter Bruland
Sent: Thursday, 10 May 2007 6:07 AM
To: Yousef Syed; security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: Home laptops on a corporate network


Sounds like a good idea, but there are security vulnerabilities with
VMWare. Not sure if any current malware/spy ware/virus takes advantage
of these flaws though.
Also how the OS within the VMWare image is configured has a great deal
to do with how secure it is.

Sounds like it would be hard to maintain these VMs and make sure that
they are *clean*.

One way that sounds easier to configure and maintain, is setting up a
VLAN X where the VPN clients connect, then only allow RDC via port XXXX
to VLAN Y where they can access either a Terminal Server or their office
PC.
And have some nice filtering setup between the VLANs, such as a
Sonicwall, Cisco, Barracuda etc.


A lot of good ideas and questions has been posted here, but nobody has
mentioned anything about two factor authentication or password
management in combination with remote access.

Assuming you have a pretty good setup, where the clients are checked
before entering the network as well as filters to prevents all sorts of
*bad* things from happening. With weak passwords or a poor password
policy, you could have users accessing the network who should not be
there.

Seems that if you're HIPAA/SOC, you should not have remote access :-(


-Petter





-----Original Message-----
From: listbounce () securityfocus com [mailto:listbounce () securityfocus com]
On Behalf Of Yousef Syed
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 4:35 PM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: Home laptops on a corporate network

Just wondering...
But is it possible to setup a locked-down VMWare image for external
laptop users to use if they really-really need access your corporate
network. (a small subsection of the network inside its own DMZ
specifically designed to share data)


Personally, I can't think of a reason why an external laptop (or USB
drive for that matter) would need access to the internal corporate
network anyway. They can be provided with separate access to get onto
the internet from a segmented system that has no access to the Internal
system.

ys


On 08/05/07, Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers <bugtraq () planetcobalt net>
wrote:
> On 2007-05-08 christopherkelley () hotmail com wrote:
> > I'd recommend NOT doing this. Especially if you are trying comply 
> > with HIPAA. Keep in mind that you will have little to no management 
> > capability over these personal laptops, which means you have no 
> > ability to verify patch level and AV update on these machines that 
> > may have EPHI on them. Not to mention the fact that these employees 
> > are probably taking them home and plugging them into their home 
> > networks, where they (or their kids) are running bearshare, 
> > gnutella, grokster, bitorrent, and surfing to unfiltered web sites.
> > Not only does this mean that they are potentially exposing critical 
> > data in this manner, it also means they are bringing potentially 
> > infested computers into the soft chewy center of your network.
> >
> > Whenever you have an employee with a laptop, you create a liability 
> > to your network, allowing them to use personal laptops presents an 
> > even bigger liability. IMHO, this level of risk is unacceptable, 
> > especially from a HIPAA compliance standpoint.
>
> I wholeheartedly second that recommendation. Allowing corporate data 
> on private computers (or private computers on a corporate network) is 
> a bad, BAD practice. Never EVER do that. You really want to do the 
> exact
> opposite: establish a policy that *prohibit* employees from 
> transferring corporate data to private computers, and have it signed 
> by each employee.
>
> Regards
> Ansgar Wiechers
> --
> "All vulnerabilities deserve a public fear period prior to patches 
> becoming available."
> --Jason Coombs on Bugtraq



--
Yousef Syed
"To ask a question is to show ignorance; not to ask a question, means
you remain ignorant" - Japanese Proverb