Posted: 3/8/2010 4:51:45 AM EDT
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My wife picked up a contracting gig recently. The company she's working with is locked down tight with regards to internet access. They supply a laptop but she has to VPN to their network in order to access anything. She has internet access but can't get to her Messenger, her Hotmail account or her personal email account (my domain).
She needs access in some form to be able to communicate online. We have Verizon but no smartphone. Smartphone is ~$200 & another $30 a month for the data plan. I'd prefer to not go that route. What other options are out there? |
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Trying to circumvent their safeguards is probably a quick way to end that contracting gig.
fwiw our company cut off access to all external email like google and yahoo. And don't let them catch you with a laptop that isn't theirs and secured with the encryption software. |
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Quoted:
Interesting. What are you doing in that scenario, that would be considered harmful? I'm in the financial services industry. We don't have wireless access for security reasons either. However, we do have a VPN for working from home. I suppose they're afraid we might use our gmail accounts to steal customer data. Quoted:
To be clear, I'm not looking for a way to circumvent their VPN. Just *any* way for her to say send me an email/IM that doesn't use their systems. They've restricted access for a reason. Perhaps they'd be ok with her using a wireless adapter but I'd be surprised. We had to seriously fight back on some of the ridiculous requirements they were trying to implement. We only succeeded because we're a development organization and proved (after the fact) that we couldn't do our jobs. For example, they disabled all USB ports for writing to keep us from stealing via flash drives. They also disabled the write capability of our CD burners. I forget the other stupid stuff they tried. They succeeded in the customer service areas. |
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Bridging a secured to an unsecured network is a huge no-no, and would piss me right off if I found my users doing it (also terminable per our Corporate Use policy).
You can buy a 3G stick, but at $200ish + monthly data, you're better off going the smartphone route and keeping business/personal separate. |
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Not looking to circumvent their safeguards. Looking for solutions that allow her to have onsite access to at least her hotmail. That is the definition of circumvent. If they wanted her to have access to her hotmail she would have it... but they do not so it is blocked. If she finds a way it can very well mean termination. It is their network she can ask but acting without permission is grounds for termination... their network their rules. It is a matter of security AND having employees actually do their jobs instead of personal crap. |
| The only way I know of getting around that would be to create a SSH tunnel to a system outside their network and have it work as a proxy or use VNC or RDP to connect to the remote system. But I am pretty sure that would raise some redflags with her network support. |
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Quoted: Not looking to circumvent their safeguards. Looking for solutions that allow her to have onsite access to at least her hotmail. If they want her to have access to hotmail that does not involve her job, they'd either already have given it to her (and everyone else) or she'll have to ask for it and give good reason to them as to why. |
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OK, OK I get the point. I do hope you realize we're trying to help by looking out for her even if it's not necessarily the answer you were hoping for. Quoted:
Get her a phone with txt capability so that she can communicate during the day. I like the texting option the best. |
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with verizon, you can still tether your phone to a laptop without having the data plan. it simply uses your plan minutes instead. i know this because my dad got rid of the data plan recently, but still dials up occationally
ETA: and that's with a basic old Razor |
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Quoted:
with verizon, you can still tether your phone to a laptop without having the data plan. it simply uses your plan minutes instead. i know this because my dad got rid of the data plan recently, but still dials up occationally ETA: and that's with a basic old Razor That won't work for her. She has to use a company-supplied laptop that's locked down. |
| This probably won't apply, but make sure to verify that she is able to bring a phone w/ a camera into her building. At my current contracting gig, there are a few buildings in the the complex where camera phones are forbidden...but we do get fairly free reign of the internet. Go figure. |
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She could just Remote Desktop to her computer at home. Port-forward port 3389 on your home router, to her home computer. If they block 3389 at work, change/regedit the registry port for Remote Desktop on her laptop to some other open port. Be careful though. She could get into trouble. Quoted: +1Buy a netbook and a 3g wi-fi card. Problem solved. |
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Quoted:
To be clear, I'm not looking for a way to circumvent their VPN. Just *any* way for her to say send me an email/IM that doesn't use their systems. You mentioned a smart phone, she should be able to get email and send it from that source. Using the company computer to get to a place they have blocked, is a sure way to loose that job. |
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Quoted:
I'm in the financial services industry. We don't have wireless access for security reasons either. However, we do have a VPN for working from home. I suppose they're afraid we might use our gmail accounts to steal customer data. stealing data, or using your personal email to contact customers and make promises that can't be kept in order to get their business, or arrange insider trading for example banks are big into blocking access to any email systems but their own. partly for security and privacy and partly due to the example above of doing shady dealings with customers by restricting you to their system they can monitor the email, retain it for SECC and lawsuit purposes, insure that any legitimate sending of customer information is properly encrypted to protect the customer from identity theft |
| The places I worked for that had external email and messaging open also had issues with virii coming in from these services. We can trust our internal email to have protection and filtering, but we couldn't say the same for products out of our control. Some messaging services had the file transfer abilities, which meant they were just as much a possible source for malware or trojans coming in. |