Connecting to a business network from home

[Bob W]

Hi everyone,

 

My company has given me a laptop to do bits and pieces of work from home. I connect through my own router to the office network. However, at the same time, my own personal laptop is connected to the internet via the same router. I use this laptop for things like personal email and recreational use of the internet which I would not be allowed to do with my company's laptop.

 

My question is this: can my company see what I'm doing on my personal laptop just because it's on the same router as their laptop?

 

Thanks in advance for your advice,

Bob

[BeeCeeBee]

The short answer is no as to your personal home computer and probably as to the business computer. You are not using the same router as the company. Your home router is used to give you a wireless connection to your own ISP.

 

When you connect to the company servers you are doing so on the internet using settings provided by the company. Whether or not they can log in to the company computer remotely really depends on what is installed on that computer and how the company IP folks set things up. They will have access to anything you do that is done through the company server.

 

So if you do company work on your personal computer and log on through it. They should be able to retrieve any data that is on their server, This should have no effect on your personal data that is separate form the work that you may be doing. .

 

Of course all this assumes that your company is acting ethically and not hacking everyone's personal computer which is unlikely.