The exchange of business data between a telecommuting workstation and the communications computer at the institution normally takes place via public communications networks. As neither the institution nor the telecommuter can fully guarantee the confidentiality, integrity and availability of their information in such public communications networks, additional safeguards might be required if the networks do not offer a sufficiently high level of security.
In general, data transmission between home workstations and the institution must meet the following security requirements:
Ensuring the confidentiality of transmitted data: A sufficiently reliable encryption mechanism must be used to prevent the contents of data from being recovered even if these data are intercepted during transmission between the home workstation and the communications computer at the institution. In addition to a suitable encryption technique, this also requires appropriate key management and a change of keys at regular intervals.
Ensuring the integrity of transmitted data: The employed transfer protocols must be able to identify and reverse coincidental changes to data during their transmission. If required, an additional error detection mechanism can be used to identify intentional manipulation during data transmission.
Ensuring the availability of data transmission lines: If time delays during telecommuting are very difficult to tolerate, the selected public communications network should provide redundant routes which prevent a complete breakdown in communications should one of the routes fail. Under certain circumstances, redundant network links between the interfaces of the telecommuting workstation and communications computer at the institution can be dispensed with.
Ensuring the authenticity of data: During the transmission of data between telecommuters and the institution, it should be possible to reliably determine whether communications are taking place between the correct parties, in order to preclude masquerading. This means that the indicated source of data should be identical to the actual source of the data. In addition, it should be possible to clearly establish whether data apparently transmitted by the institution actually originated from that institution.
Ensuring the reproducibility of data transmission: To render data communications reproducable, logging functions can be used to subsequently ascertain which data were transmitted to which location.
Ensuring the reception of data: If the correct reception of data is of importance during telecommuting, acknowledgement routines can be used to determine whether transmitted data have been received correctly.
The performance of the mechanisms needed in each case depends on the degree of protection required by the data.
Additional controls:
Do the communications protocols in use meet the above-mentioned requirements to a sufficient extent?
