Working at home

- [Instructor] There's two kinds of working at home. There's the kind you plan for and there's the kind that sneaks up on you. Many people, myself included have been working at home or primarily at home for a number of years. Some people start out their career working remotely or find themselves in a job where they work just as well or even better when they're not onsite at an office. Many consultants, contractors, service providers and others operate out of a home office, a home studio or a home workspace. And it's common for people to work from home for an extended period of time if they need to care for family members or if they face a situation or condition that requires time at home. Though, it may be the case that workers who really enjoy going into the office, arrive in the morning to find a broken water pipe, a power outage or are prevented from going to the office due to inclement weather or face some other temporary situation that forces them to work from an alternative location. And at the beginning of 2020, millions of workers found themselves suddenly having to do their job in home offices or home spaces that weren't designed for or weren't intended for getting work done. Whether we plan to work at home all the time, some of the time or we just suddenly find ourselves working at home due to conditions beyond our control, the safety and security of devices and information remain important. There's a broad spectrum of tasks that can be accomplished perfectly well outside an office. Designers, programmers, accountants, support representatives and many other jobs involve working with personal, confidential or proprietary information. When we're working at home, we need to be a little bit more vigilant than we might be in the office. In offices, a lot of the digital and physical security that we rely on is handled by specialists working for the company or organization. Companies have employees or contractors on staff to watch for sneaky people around the office and to block sneaky websites, phishing attempts and other digital threats. When working at home, more of that responsibility falls on us. Many people use a computer to do their work and so this course will focus largely on computer related security tips, but I'll also cover other tips that will apply to everyone, even if they don't use a computer for work. That includes thinking about the space in which you do your work. You might have a dedicated room in your house or even a separate studio or a working area where your work materials stay and where you do all of your work tasks. Or you might be sharing space in your home or setting up a temporary workspace at the kitchen table or in the corner of your living room. So, while it may feel like setting up a permanent home workspace and using space at home temporarily are two separate things, the way we think about securing our work while using them are pretty similar. In some cases we'll have more options and in others we'll need to think more creatively. Personally, I prefer working from home and I find that I'm a lot more productive when I do, though many people prefer the interactions and experience of working in an office. This course isn't going to be about the merits or drawbacks of working from home. I'm not trying to convince you to like it. We'll take as our basic assumption that you're working from home either by choice or by policy and that's where we'll start. Be sure to check out these LinkedIn Learning learning paths and courses if you want to explore other aspects of working from home regardless of the reason. There's a document with the titles and links in the exercise files. So, don't worry about writing them down right now.