Today we have a sponsored post from Brian Brian Lapidus the Chief Operating Officer of Kroll Fraud Solutions. Many companies worry about telecommuter security and Brian is here to share some tips for keeping your telecommuters secure. Take it away Brian!

Telecommuting, whether full-time or part-time, is becoming increasingly popular in the United States. According to a 2008 survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, 57 percent of HR professionals indicate that their organization offers some form of telecommuting. The potential rewards are many – from increased productivity and cost savings to happier employees and greater appeal among potential recruits.

Despite the benefits, telecommuting ranks high on the list of data security threats for organizations, particularly if there is no formal policy in place. The most common missteps include using unsecured networks, sharing company laptops or equipment with family members and friends, and failing to update software and install security patches, among others.

Fortunately, there are certain measures that every organization can take to minimize the risks:

1. Establish a baseline by assessing all current telecommuting activities. Even if no employees are formally authorized to work remotely, chances are it happens anyway – think sick children, inclement weather and other unexpected events. The technology afforded to most office workers allows them to do a substantial amount of work from a remote location. Many employees take advantage of this fact to “work from home” during an emergency or to “catch up at home” when work starts to pile up. Regardless of the reason, the threat of data breach is very real, and must be assessed.

2. Develop a comprehensive telecommuting security policy. A clear and concise security policy that establishes the roles and requirements of employees is absolutely essential to ensuring a successful telecommuting program. The policy should specifically outline security measures and procedures for handling sensitive data, including storage and disposal. While the focus will undoubtedly be on cyber security, organizations should make sure to address the proper handling of paper files. Consider providing employees with shredders or secure storage containers to meet this requirement.

3. Make decisions on equipment usage. An organization’s policy on equipment usage is an important component to an organization’s telecommuting security policy (see #2). Organizations should decide up front whether telecommuting employees will use personal computers or company-issued equipment, as this will be a major factor in what cyber security measures can and cannot be implemented. Providing equipment gives the company more control over security issues, but employees must be provided with explicit instructions for the care and usage of the devices (i.e., never leave laptops unattended in public, never download and install programs without company approval). Even if the organization allows employees to use their own PCs, certain minimum security measures must be in place, such as firewalls, anti-virus and spyware programs, and encryption software.

4. Provide adequate technical support and training. Before sending employees home with sensitive company information – whether via laptop or hard copy file, they should be trained on the requirements set forth in the organization’s telecommuting security policy. In the case of laptop and network use, ensure that employees fully understand how to access data securely. Remote workers should be trained periodically in techniques to spot suspicious activity, including signs that a computer has been infected with malware. Access to technical support is also an important factor – without support, an employee might be tempted to do whatever it takes to get the system up and running when something goes wrong, including disabling security features.

5. Conduct periodic audits. Even if the company’s IT department has remote management capability, it’s important to verify firsthand that all equipment is in good condition and working properly. Have employees bring in equipment periodically for a checkup, and review logs to determine what information has been accessed.

As a final word of caution, organizations should not assume that they can solve security issues by restricting employee access to applications and systems. After all, productivity will be negatively impacted if remote workers don’t have access to the tools and information necessary to perform. Most importantly, don’t let the cons outweigh the pros. Organizations that face the risks of telecommuting head on with comprehensive security policies and sound cyber security measures will be free to reap the rewards that telecommuting can provide.

Brian Lapidus, chief operating officer for Kroll’s Fraud Solutions division, has unique frontline experience helping today’s businesses safeguard against and respond to data breaches. At Kroll, Lapidus oversees a highly-skilled team that includes veteran licensed investigators specializing in supporting breach victims and restoring individuals’ identities to pre-theft status. Lapidus is also a regular contributor to the Kroll blog A Dialogue on Data Security.

Today we have a guest post from David Shoemaker. He’s here to tell us about his company’s new tool ShopTalk. Basically it’s like a group instance message in your browser, only better. We also have 100 free passes to give away. I’ll let David explain it.

My daily commute involves the freeway. Every day I drive to a large office building which sits on an even larger campus of a Big Corporation. I walk up to the third floor and weave my way through offices and cubicles, touching my security badge to no less than three electronic wall sensors to unlock doors along the way. My team of 12 engineers is scattered around the third floor. This is all in stark contrast to my last job — where I was working at a startup on a far-flung team of six engineers who worked in five different states — but it’s not as bad as you might think.

I see my coworkers face-to-face every day. We eat lunch together and hang out in the halls chatting. We talk about work most of the time. The most common question is, “What are you working on?” The answer is usually followed by, “Oh, cool,” and then, “Have you looked at my work for such-and-such project? I think you could reuse some of it.” Frequently an eavesdropping coworker will emerge from his office to join the conversation, eager to share advice. Those hallway conversations are incredibly useful and time-saving. That is exactly what the teleworker often lacks. That collective wisdom, two-heads-are-better-than-one sharing of knowledge and experience that happens so naturally in an office just doesn’t take place when your only communication with your coworkers is weekly conference calls with strict agendas.

Luckily, conference calls needn’t be your only communication channel. At my last job we used IRC. I was glad to see Zack recommend IRC here on The One Minute Commute last year. I’ve never seen anything else affect cohesion within a distributed team like IRC can. When your whole team is in one chat room, you feel free to ask questions any time. Unlike instant messaging, you don’t even need to know whom to ask. When all conversations happen in one room, interested parties are free to observe or participate. Reflecting on our team’s experience with IRC over the past four years, we could only come to one conclusion: everyone should be using it.

Unfortunately, we could easily point to reasons why more businesses weren’t using IRC. Lots of teams don’t have an extra server computer lying around on which to install an IRC server. The IT department would need to administer the server and the IRC client software on every workstation. IRC is operated via a bunch of arcane text commands that represent a steep learning curve. After some brainstorming, we decided to create an IRC-like service that would alleviate these problems — a group chat service built with businesses in mind. Enter ShopTalk. We’ve been working on it and using it for months now and we’d like to enlist the readers of The One Minute Commute to participate in our beta. First, let me tell you a little about ShopTalk.

Zero Setup

You don’t have to install or administer anything. It all runs on our servers. Simply create an account and start chatting.

Multiple Rooms

You probably work primarily on one team, but you’re peripherally involved with several, right? ShopTalk allows you to be in multiple chat rooms at once. Your team’s room is the active tab:

If someone on another team so much as mentions your name, that tab will instantly light up, and you can switch to it with one click:

Infinite Archive

Hallway conversations are great, but they can easily be forgotten. ShopTalk archives all your chatting forever, so you can refer back to it. Since the archives are securely stored on our servers, you won’t lose conversations that took place while your computer wasn’t connected — you can easily log in and scroll up to catch up on what you missed.

Sneak Peek

We’re not quite ready to release ShopTalk to the world yet, but we will be soon! For now, I’ve created a demo code for 100 interested readers of The One Minute Commute: ONEMINUTE. You can redeem that demo code here. Try it out and let me know what you think. We look forward to your feedback.

My first thought after finishing Wayne Turmel’s Remote Working: Turning “Them” Into “Us” was I should’ve written that. Wayne tackled the tough issue of building relationships on remote teams with a deep understanding of the problem and straightforward advice. There’s a lot more I could tell you about Wayne, but I’ll let him take the mic as he answers today’s 10 Telecommuting Questions.

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

I’m a former standup comic turned corporate drone. After 13 years in the training business I’m now the president of www.greatwebmeetings.com and work from home in Glen Ellyn, IL. We help people learn to sell, present, train and manage using any web presentation platform. I’m also the Virtual Working contributor for BNET and Management-Issues.com.

2. How long have you been a telecommuter?

I started about 4 years ago working more and more from home to avoid office politics, craziness, and recover from all the airplane travel. They took me out back and shot me 2 years ago. I started Greatwebmeetings and I’ve worked from home since then with occasional forays into the big wide world for sales calls.

3. Why did you start?

Most of the people who worked for me were scattered around the world, my clients were all over the country, and my boss was on the East Coast; so it’s not like I was working face-to-face with my team anyway. That’s not unusual, 70% of managers now have remote employees although very few companies have figured out the implications of that. The company was also going through a lot of turmoil and the environment wasn’t conducive to positive energy or creativity so a couple of days a week I’d work from home. Now, of course, I work for myself and who needs to pay for office space?

4. How many people do you regularly work with?

I’m a small company with only a couple of people I partner with on projects, but my clients are scattered around the world so there are probably 5-6 projects going on at any time.

5. When was the last time you saw your coworkers face-to-face?

I have one client close to home so I venture out to work with them. Actually, I make any excuse to see people. I’m a big old “E” (Extrovert) on the Myers Briggs and I don’t deal well in captivity. Getting out to see people is important to my mental health even if it’s not the people I work with regularly.

6. What is your desert island must-have telecommuting tool?

Skype. My oldest client is in the UK and 6 o’clock in the morning I’m video to video with them at least once a week. It’s also got IM, file transfer, and I can make really cheap phone calls to anywhere in the world. I may be in Glen Ellyn but my clients are spread out from France to Australia to Washington DC.

7. How many different ways did you communicate with your team today?

Hmmmm Skype, telephone, email, and I hope one of them isn’t psychic because I cussed someone out telepathically for something. I hope they didn’t hear that.

8. What is the one thing that really makes your home office officy?

I have a laptop and a desktop with a big monitor, but the thing that really makes it “officey” is a door. I can work without having to listen to my wife watch “The View”. A blessing if there ever was one. Joy Behar fighting with Elizabeth is not conducive to clear thinking.

9. Do you ever miss cubicle livin’?

Actually, a little. I miss the daily interaction with people and the ritual of going to work… get up, eat, shower put on your big boy clothes and leave the house. I am really good about settling into a routine though and treating this like work. I don’t miss the commute, venturing out in the Chicago winter, or the 7 times a day I had to stick my head up over the cubicle like a meerkat to see what all the racket was. Also I’ve dropped 40 pounds this year because all that commute time now lets me get to the gym.

10. What are the best pajamas for long conference calls?

That’s easy. If I’m not using the webcam, it’s my Toshiro Mifune T-shirt and sweat pants. If the video’s on, it’s a button down shirt and boxer shorts. Well, sometimes jeans because boxers and leather office chairs are an uncomfortable situation.

Wayne Turmel is the a speaker, writer and president of Greatwebmeetings.com and the author of 6 Weeks to a Great Webinar- the best selling web presentation book on Amazon. He lives in the Chicago area. You can find him at www.greatwebmeetings.com and listen to his podcast, The Cranky Middle Manager Show. You can also follow him on Twitter @greatwebmeeting.

• Check out Wayne’s company: Greatwebmeetings.com
• Follow @greatwebmeeting on Twitter
• Listen to the The Cranky Middle Manager Show

Thanks for stopping by Wayne!

Hiring teleworkers is a stressful experience. Work shifting takes a specific set of skills that are difficult to evaluate in an interview. Even worse, it takes a lot of time and money to find out that you hired the wrong person.

That’s why I created a system for evaluating which candidates make good teleworkers. It looks at seven talents of effective teleworkers and gives you tips for how to evaluate them. Teleworkers are a diverse and talented group of people, but every successful teleworker I’ve spoken with has each of these seven talents.

So check out How to Hire Effective Workshifters: 7 Signs and How to Evaluate Them over at Work Shifting.

This article will change the way you think about hiring work shifters (I’ll admit I’m a little biased), but there’s something missing. You need something to take with you for the interview. That’s why I created the Hiring Work Shifters Cheat Sheet.

So read the article, download the cheat sheet, and let us know how they work for you.

Check it out

Read How to Hire Effective Workshifters: 7 Signs and How to Evaluate Them at Work Shifting.

Then download the free Hiring Work Shifters Cheat Sheet.

Justin Levy over at Work Shifting just posted a guest post from me, Small Distractions Keep You Focused. It shows you how little things can help you stay focused during long conference calls. I’ve followed Work Shifting since they started and I know my article is in good company.

Check it out.

The minute I read Sylvia Dahlby’s amazing and insightful comment on Could telecommuting be a career mistake? I wanted to hear more of her thoughts as a teleworker. I found @SylvieDahl on Twitter and invited her to answer 10 questions about telecommuting.

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

I’m a sales & marketing professional, currently working for Advanced Personnel Systems, Inc. the makers of SmartSearch, an industry leading software solution that automates workflow for staffing agencies, executive search firms, staff augmentation & consulting firms, and corporate human resources. I work from home, so I communicate with my customers and prospects via telephone, email and online communities; and I conduct online product demos either webinar-style or on the phone.

2. How long have you been a telecommuter?

Since 1995.

3. Why did you start?

I was already working at home for five years, struggling to make a home-based desktop publishing company profitable. One of my clients offered me a part-time, commission-only sales job. So I started working for him, selling exhibit space at a technical job fair. I wasn’t online at that time, we synched up an ACT database on a dial-up connection that took almost all night. Still, the work itself was less time consuming, more fun, and an easier way to make money. So I began working for him full time, and kept part of my business as a sideline.

4. How many people do you regularly work with?

I don’t know – a lot! I have about a hundred client companies, most with multiple points of contact, plus hundreds of prospects that I call & email regularly using my Sales/CRM database, dozens of new leads every week to qualify, and about a dozen or so people in my company headquarters that I speak with on a regular basis along with weekly sales meeting & monthly all-hands staff meetings via conference calls. I also work with several of our vendor partners, and I work on marketing projects with outside service providers as well. I’m tied into the company phone system that also has IM, and I’m well wired into my LinkedIn groups and online communities. I even get out once in a while or travel to trade shows and professional association meetings.

5. When was the last time you saw your coworkers face-to-face?

I saw one member of the sales team a few weeks ago when I went to an industry Expo. I go to a few conferences every year and see one or two of my colleagues. I also regard my clients as co-workers — since I work directly with them too — I probably saw about a half dozen of them at the last show, and went out to dinner with one of them. If you want to count vendor partners, a handful of them were also exhibiting. The last time I saw all of my company co-workers face-to-face was at the Christmas party; that’s probably the only time all of us are together since I’m not the only one who teleworks.

6. What is your desert island must-have telecommuting tool?

LOL, I happen to live on an island (albeit a tropical one) the Big Island of Hawaii. And oddly enough, I lived in the desert north of Phoenix, Arizona when I started. Anyway, I’d say the only thing I really can’t work without is my cell phone since it has text messaging, email and mobile web access; it’s a mini-office in the palm of my hand.

7. How many different ways did you communicate with your team today?

IP phone which means calls to HQ can be transferred to me & I can also route calls to tech support, billing, etc as needed. IM via the same phone system. Email. Cell phone with one team member who is traveling this week.

8. What is the one thing that really makes your home office officy?

It’s separate from the rest of the house, a large bedroom with its own half-bath that takes up the entire top floor of my house. It was built as a room addition, and it was a key factor in deciding to buy this particular house.

9. Do you ever miss cubicle livin’?

Never.

10. What are the best pajamas for long conference calls?

Technically, I don’t own any pajamas. I have a closet full of long & short comfy dresses that I call “every-wear” — loungewear or loose-fitting dresses that are wrinkle-free synthetics, warm crushed velvet or cozy velour for winter, cool crinkly cotton or light gauzy fabrics for summer — and I typically wear one of these dresses 24/7 because they are comfortable enough to sleep in and most of them are nice enough to wear outside with the right shoes. A few can even be dressed up and worn as office attire with the right accessories or jackets. Since I moved to Hawaii last year, I’ve started adding muumuus to my every-wear collection.

Sylvia Dahlby is a rainmaker and purveyor of software for the human resources, recruiting & staffing industry.

• Check out her company: http://www.smartsearchonline.com
• Follow @SylvieDahl on Twitter
• Connect with Sylvia on LinkedIn

Lucy Nixon at Corporate Eye just published a guest post from me about using the social media experts that are already in your company to get your message out there called Stop Trying To Hold Back The Ocean.

Every company should be doing this.

I’ve just published a new article at iMedia Connection: The 3 Most Common Mistakes of Web Presentations. Check it out to see if you’re making any of these mistakes in your web presentations.

And thanks to the great guys from iMedia Connection. If you want to up your marketing IQ go check them out.