I’m non-techy. I work for a public school district and visit with kids in about a dozen schools. I like having my work email on my phone so teachers can get in touch if they need me. For years we’ve just used the outlook app with no real issues that I’ve noticed. We’re seeing more and more micromanagement and it sucks. We recently got notice that we have to install Cisco Duo on our phones if we want to have our email on it. Should i do that? Or just say no and be ok with being out of contact?
Duo is Cisco’s version of authentication. The only permissions it has on my phone is notifications.
In its current form, it doesn’t appear to let your company’s IT department control your phone.
Do you have any concerns about having it? I mostly don’t want my phone activities or location tracked.
How specific? Most companies can tell if you are connecting to the mail server from an IP in a different city without needing any app to do that.
Just within the city, doing paperwork from home instead of at a campus.
your IP will be the easy give away if they care to audit. a possible solution is to VPN to the campus and nat your traffic from a campus IP, but now we are getting into additional questionable action.
If they’re on their phone they should just make sure they don’t connect to their home WiFi or their campus WiFi on their phone during work hours. All anyone will see them connecting with then is their cell network IP, prolly just an ipv6 address, and there won’t ever be an obvious tell that they are in a specific location in town.
agreed. as long as the administrative requirement is not “all work done from office desk”, and cellular carrier IP ranges are allowed for his specific services, a cellular connection from laptop (cuz tech reasons) works. OP just likely needs a reasonable cya excuse to make things smooth.
Please don’t be a hero. Work your 40 hours and then stop. You didn’t clarify, but I’m slightly worried that you want to be more connected which might lead you to increase your workload or working hours, and that will make your job less sustainable in the long run, and we really want people like you to stick around for many years to come.
After your comment, i removed the outlook widget from my phone. I left the app on it, but i look at it so much less in my off time now. Previously, I thought i was only mildly irritated by the emails i sent in outside hours. Until it was gone, I didn’t recognize the general anxiety i was having from just seeing it there. Thank you!!
Don’t.
Two reasons:
Many employers require you to install phone-management software as part of the data loss mitigation/data exfiltration requirements - and those requirements might be set by their insurers.
This gives them the ability to remotely lock or wipe your phone at any time - useful to them because they remove company data if you lose your phone, or you leave the company, or are suspended for any reason. Obviously that’ll also lose any personal data on the phone, but that’s your problem, not theirs. They can also monitor its location and similar things.
That’s obviously a reason why you should never, ever, use a work-issued device for personal use - besides it being against their acceptable use policy. If your employer requires you to check email then they are required to issue you the means to do so. They cannot insist that you use any personal devices for that.
It’s bad for your mental health.
Keep work to work hours. Keep work devices for work. Keep personal hours and devices for your personal use.
This physical separation requires a little discipline but, having been on all sides of this barrier (employer, employee, suffering with poor mental health, and currently, in good mental health) - I know this to be the only way to achieve a health balance.
I’m forgetting the episode but darknet diaries podcast had one where a guy took revenge against a former employer and wiped out an entire schools email system and wiped all phones that has logged into the school email. This was done from compromising the school’s outlook admin account.
That was the first time i learned that logging into the employer email could give them the level of control over your device. Fortunately i never have done that for the #2 reason.
There are usually a couple more steps beyond just signing in. Sometimes it will require an app or you get a big warning stating hey, the employer is going to gain a ton of access on here, do you agree?
