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If backup procedures for mobile users are to be effective, they should be tested and adjusted frequently. The recovery process may never be needed, and these procedures may be regarded as taking a lot of time. However, without such procedures, it may take the better part of a week just to obtain a replacement microcomputer. After that, it must be determined what applications and databases must be loaded. Finally, if backup procedures are not enforced, how will the user’s personal information be restored to a new notebook?

INTEGRITY

In this section, integrity is defined as the process of ensuring that the intended meaning of information is maintained. Information integrity is provided by allowing only authorized persons and processes to perform only those tasks that they are authorized to perform. Everything else is prohibited.

Software Considerations

Virus Protection. Remote users are no more or no less susceptible to viruses than their office-based counterparts. Therefore, they are likely to experience a virus infection of their computer within the next few years. Proper procedures can prevent the virus from attaching itself to any of the hard drive’s files. A corporate contract should be purchased for one of the leading virus detection and eradication software products. The cost can be surprisingly reasonable, in some cases less than $15 per user per year, although some very good products may be even cheaper. The secret of success is to have the detection software active in memory at all times as a terminate and stay resident (TSR) program. Some vendors can relocate the TSR so that base memory is not used at all, while other TSR programs may take as little as 5K bytes of base memory. With the detection software active in memory, the computer’s user may remain passive. Many organization’s detection programs have limited success because they require the user to execute a scan program to check diskettes or hard drives after disconnecting from a bulletin board. During a normal day’s workload, users may often overlook this program. If TSR software is used, however, the microcomputer should lock up when it detects a virus, and it should not allow the user to proceed. The eradication or cleaning program should be run immediately to remove the virus. The remote user should be provided with a system-bootable diskette that contains a virus detection and eradication program. If additional directions are required to remove the virus, the mobile user should contact the organization’s help desk for assistance.

Notebook Configuration Integrity. Although the name personal computer may have been appropriate at one time, today it is a misnomer because the microcomputer has become such an integral part of information processing for the business community. By personalizing the notebook to the configuration of their choice, users may cause incompatibility with their organizations’ requirements.

As part of the processing infrastructure, it is important that the information technologist control the protocol layers to ensure proper connectivity, memory management, and execution of the company’s processes. This is not to say that mobile users are not allowed to install some software of their choice. An example of coexistence on the microcomputer would be to control the autoexec.bat by not allowing anyone except the systems administrator to modify the file. However, the last line of the autoexec.bat is a call to an autoexec.bat that gives the user the ability to add activity to the booting process. Today, a number of client-based products exist that are designed to establish administrative control over the configuration and accessibility of directories and files on the hard drive of notebooks. These products support multiple-user confidentiality and several levels of administrators.

The content of certain directories on the hard drive should also be under the control of the systems administrator. Again, policies and guidelines should allow a section of the hard drive to be used at the discretion of the mobile user. Procedures and guidelines should clearly state the areas that may not be altered and the latitude the mobile user has to customize the microcomputer.

These same robust access control products provide complete control over the DOS computing environment. Access to printers, ports, disk drives, modems, files, and directories may be constructed so that several users of the same microcomputer may not have the same authorized use of these facilities. In addition, passive DES (or proprietary) encryption and decryption of files or directories may be established. The major vendors provide the ability to configure directories on the hard drive to be encrypted or decrypted on the fly. When a file is written to the designated directory, it is automatically encrypted. Conversely, when a file is read into memory by the authorized owner of the directory, it is automatically decrypted. This prevents unauthorized access to information even though several users may share the same microcomputer.


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