I know it is hard to believe, but it has been five months since all of us were sent home to work and attend classes. Being jettisoned into a working from home environment with little preparation has its challenges. With the lines between work/school and our personal lives being blurred, it is normal for our file management to become a little chaotic.  The introduction of the new VPN service in the middle of all that certainly didn’t help.  I helped over 51 people transition to GlobalProtect. Now that things have calmed down a bit and it is apparent we are going to be working from home for the foreseeable future, I thought a few file management tips would be helpful.

Give everyone their own profile on shared computers

Not everyone has the ability to have a separate computer for every member of the family. Often we have to share with others in the household. By creating a separate profile for each person, you limit what they can access. To use the computer they login to their profile which is secured with a password. What applications they can use and what documents they have access to depends on which user profile they are logging into. While this doesn’t completely protect your data, it does limit the damage that can be done. You can find more information on setting up user profiles on How To Geek.

Use a different browser for work

Keeping your work/school and personal life separate is not easy when you are using the same computer for both. If you have a personal Gmail account, you have seen how easy it is to accidentally send an email to your boss/instructor with your personal email address and save that report you were working on in your personal Google Drive. Both confuse your colleagues/instructors into thinking you are a hacker trying to gain access to the network. As well it makes it difficult for you to find things.

By using a separate browser for work/school, all your work bookmarks are in one easy to find place. In addition when you send an email or save a document, it will be your Mount Royal email and Google Drive login credentials that will be auto-filled rather than your personal ones.

Save your documents in Google Drive or the MRU Network

When we are in a hurry, it is easy to click the Save button and then put that document on the default drive. Unfortunately, that is often the C: drive or your desktop. If your hard drive crashes, the files will be lost unless you back them up onto another drive. In addition, if you are an employee due for a new machine, you will lose any data stored locally. Remember, IT Services does not back anything up when they replace your machine.

Make your life easier, save files on your MRU Google Drive. If you find the Google Drive too onerous to use, download Google Drive File Stream. It will add a G: drive to file explorer allowing you to save and open documents just like you do with the C: drive. A Mac version of Google File Stream is also available.

If you don’t like using the Google Drive, you can download files from the MRU network using Webfiles. Once your work is done, don’t forget to upload them back onto the network.  Remember files left on your C: drive or desktop are vulnerable. Don’t leave them there.

Limit access to shared documents to those with a Mount Royal email address.

If you are sharing documents with colleagues, instructors or students; limit who can access them by choosing to share them with those who have a Mount Royal email address or a specific email address. This ensures that even if someone outside of the University community gets a hold of the link, they cannot access the document.

If someone requests access to this document later on, deny them access and remind them to use their Mount Royal login credentials to view it. This prevents hackers who are using a generic Gmail account from impersonating a colleague, instructor or student and tricking you into giving them document access.

If you have VPN access don’t download files to your home machine

Some employees need VPN access to remote in to their MRU workstation. If you have this type of access, you are working with sensitive data. That data must stay on the Mount Royal network. Do not download it to your machine at home.

Remember to give yourself a pat on the back

We are all working in less than ideal conditions trying to deliver ideal results. I hope these tips make that a bit easier.  Don’t forget to give yourself a pat on the back for doing a great job. You rock!