Write a persuasive memo

Employees Remote Data Access
Students’ Name
Professors’ Name
Institution Affiliation

Memorandum
To:
FROM:
RE:Employees Remote Data Access
DATE:23rd Nov 2018
The increased reliance on the internet to support remote access by a range of organizations and individuals in accomplishing various tasks has its dark and positive sides. Even though you want to let your employees gain access data from their homes, I consider allowing remote data access as a risky affair from a personal experience perspective. As a developer, I have vast knowledge and experience in the field of developing and maintaining repository software applications. Hence, I can give several accounts of organizational information systems that suffered from an attack from malicious persons due to remote data access. Therefore, I stand a better chance for advising you on matters concerning allowing your employees to access data remotely. I would not advocate you to go ahead and accord your employees the right to gain access remotely due to security reasons considering that the company has a considerable amount of essential data. The memo explores to highlight some of these reasons in a bid to shed some right as to why granting your employees the right to access data remotely happens not to be a good idea.
Due to the high possibility of attacks from hackers who aim to steal sensitive data, the company needs to install advanced security systems to keep its networks secure all the time. Such requirements are usually costly for firms to maintain as it also requires highly trained IT experts who are too expensive to hire.

Another risk associated with remote access is the absence of reliable physical security. Employees and organization may fall short of fully establishing a mechanism to protect their assets from things such as theft. Stolen devices could provide an easy unauthorized entry to the systems as well as exposure of sensitive information to the wrong persons (Scarfone, Hoffman & Souppaya, 2009). Another major drawback on the idea of implementing this idea is that in most homes, the available PCs do not run updated anti-malware programs; thus, posing a significant challenge in securing the system. More so, in these families, it is hard to control the sites each member visit which further exposes the information systems to greater danger. The high cost of purchasing computers leaves the employees with no alternatives than to acquire cheap ones which run outdated application software that no longer gets any security updates.
Eavesdropping is another key security concern that makes remote access not an optimal idea. For employees to engage with the management, it would require them to use emails, make phone calls, and messaging all of which are targets of eavesdropping. Through eavesdropping, the attacker manages to intercept real-time communications such as instant messages, private phone calls, and video conferencing. The organization could suffer immensely from this type of cyber-attack as important and confidential reports could get on the hands of malicious people. Due to the extensive scope of security issues concerning remote access, it becomes difficult to entirely secure all devices from vulnerabilities such as screen overlooking (Scarfone, Hoffman & Souppaya, 2009). Such exposure leads to stealing of user account information that one could use to gain unauthorized entry to the system and data. More so, it opens a full window of opportunities for the screen overlookers to manipulate data once they get into the system and monitor individual and organizational operations once they gain access to a compromised device. Therefore, putting all the issues raised here in into consideration explains why remote data access puts the organization at a higher risk of attacks which could harm the business.

References
Scarfone, K., Hoffman, P., & Souppaya, M. (2009). Guide to enterprise telework and remote access security. NIST Special Publication, 800, 46.