Hi,

I work as a freelancer for a large multinational for whom I was previously full time employed. The e-mail system is being migrated form the UK across to the USA. I work on overseas projects as well as working flexibly from home in France whilst my base office is in Chesterfield and therefore accessing my work e-mail (client’s e-mail system) on my personal android phone using the outlook app is a very large factor in how I work flexibly. However as part of the migration we have been told this:

>Company owned Mobile devices will need to be setup to access email, full instructions will be distributed at time of migration. Access to email via mobile devices will be controlled using MobileIron (Windows and iPhones) or BES (Blackberries). As a result personally owned devices will no longer be able to access URS email using ActiveSync. This is in line with corporate IT policy. <

Whilst I try to see if I can get an exception (a company phone is not an option as I am based in France and the office in the UK etc) I’m thinking is it time to set up an e-mail adress myself just for work. Would there be a way of automatically forwarding my current work e-mail to this ‘personal’ e-mail address? I have a gmail account but would prefer something that I can use with outlook.

All ideas and thoughts gratefully appreciated. Many thanks.

Why is a company phone not an option, they work in both countries? It’ll cost them loads, but sure they can swallow the cost!

Dual sim phone? UK & France?
Or company just provide a tablet you can use wherever via wifi?

I’m British, living in Belgium, working for Japanese company & currently in Austria…
There’s always a solution 🙂

Work supplied phone and work supplied french sim?

Do they have outlook web access?

Permanently assigned company phones have always been notoriously hard to get, even at Senior Engineer level. When working on projects overseas I normally have a local contract phone. This I don’t have a problem with.

It’s rare that I use my personal phone for work phone use anyway and when I do am happy to charge it back. When working from home and needing to phone the Uk for work I use my landline as we get free calls to UK landlines. I charge the french VAT equivalent for my mobile phone contract back to the french as I’m self employed in France.

So it comes down to the fact that I need to pick up work e-mails on my personal phone when the work e-mail system will apparently no longer allow me to. They supply me with a company laptop primarily so I can access the network remotely which I could not do on any other machine as far as I have been told.

They do have outlook web access…. but we rely lots on e-mail attachments (which I know is not the best method) and web based e-mail is painful for filing messages etc.

If they are restricting it to company phones only I’d guess when they find out you are forwarding everything to a personal mail account they will be a little upset.

I’d be looking very carefully at your client’s data protection and/or information security policies. Accessing work email on personal devices is often very much frowned upon, as is forwarding work email to a personal address.

But, if you want to do it, just create a rule in Outlook that forwards all mail on arrival in your inbox to the mail address that you want to use. Bear in mind though that if you reply, the reply will come from your own address, not your work one.

Sounds dodgy though, if I was your client I don’t think i’d be too happy.

Actually, I’ve just re-read your OP. It’s pretty specific about not accessing corporate mail on personal devices.

Seems they don’t want staff having access on persona devices so either use the laptop the provide or ask them for a phone you can use.

Thanks everyone. This is threatening my rides from home whilst waiting for e-mails to arrive….!

Might be a good thing though: means I might spend less personal time doing work e-mails and getting stressed when I’m made aware of work problems! Also seems to be forcing my hand to operate a bit more independently of my client who is my former employer: I’m tempted to stop using the work supplied e-mail address and get people to contact me on my own one. Will look less profesional for ‘our’ clients though, i.e. my client’s client: will make it obvious I’m a subbie!

How do I go about arranging an e-mail address that I can use via. outlook and with webmail? Is it costly?

http://www.coffeecup.com/help/articles/set-up-gmail-for-your-own-domain/
Try google aps, it will play with outlook etc but will work really well on mobile (I use it for work) the downside is you will drop out of corporate address books, things like meting invites might not work properly and IT could still kick up a fuss.

If you’re happy for it to end in @gmail.com or @outlook.com or somesuch, it’s a piece of piss and free, just gotto Google or Outlook and sign up. If you want it to end @mugsysincorporated.com then you need to register that domain name. Again, not expensive and there are oodles of places online that will do it for you.

should add ours is a domanin and using google aps as the host.

Very bad idea. My colleague did this, I was quite shocked.

If a client sends you something they expect it to be looked after in accordance with standards they may well have approved. If you automatically take that without looking at it and hand it over to a third party unknown to them, with unknown consequences, that is a huge breach of confidence.

Very bad idea.

Sorry molgrips, what is a bad idea?

I’m going to add to those who think you need to discuss this with the company. I would hope that they are not going to restrict access from personal devices while keeping company mobiles ‘notoriously hard to get’, else it’s a bit of a silly policy. Moving to your own email address is not going to be a unilateral decision either.

I use google email with outlook and using a 123reg domain name.

I’ve asked my line manager to see if there can be an exception seeing as I am a bit of a special case and outside the way they normally operate i.e engineers driving a desk in the same office every day, whereas I either work from home in a diffferent country to my base office, am freelance and work reguarly as their representative on overseas projects often troubleshooting to try and do fieldwork in remote locations (waves from Ganja in Azerbaijan).

However I fear my line manager hands will be tied by corporate politics and hence asking here.Don’t even get me started on the skype ban with no suggested/ provided alternatives..but then I have admin rights on my machine.

If you do this, it will be a career limiting move I imagine.

Certainly my employer would treat it as grounds for dismissal if I started forwarding confidential (=all) company emails to an external email account.

Yep, your problem is data security. You have been given a company laptop with the security that they feel is appropriate for you to look at confidential documents and your webmail (containing confidential documents). Since you are being contracted out, you should have signed up to the data protection policies that the company run and they, in all likelihood, would be breaching their contracts with their Clients if they knowingly allowed staff or contractors to be downloading or accessing documents in the manner you describe (onto personal devices where the security is unknown and not managed). Your contract will say something like ‘you will adhere the <company>’s policies on IT, etc.’ and the company policy will sya you keep your webmail password secure and you don’t download documents or archive emails outside of the corporate system.

I used to work for URS, though under a previous guise. I know the corporate management is a pain, but with the kind of Clients they work for, data security is paramount. Everyone in our offices had work mobile phones (environmental sector) because we undertook field work. They will either say, use the laptop, or they should give you a work mobile.

“I need a work mobile”

“You can’t have one”

“Fine, you’ll never be able to contact me then, your loss”

Really, is it just me that thinks this is a bit weird? You can’t use your own device and they won’t supply you with a sanctioned one, what are you expected to use? Telepathy? RFC 1149?

First rule of infosec – make policies practical or else people will work around them. Sounds like they need to give you a phone for picking up email if they’re expecting a prompt response.

konagirl: who are URS?..

I think it will be as dead as a dodo. They will not see the need for me to access e-mail when I’m not with laptop. Which I can kind of understand but the way I have been working is admittedly to their advantage.

Our current client on this Azerbaijan project (a large British based petroleum company) has a team with all sorts of e-mail addresses including hotmail!

sorry I thought your quote implied the email was “URS email”… No worries.

I am with the others here, push for them to supply you with a work phone; even though you are a subcontractor, it is to their advantage.

First rule of infosec – make policies practical or else people will work around them.

+1

In large companies IT seems to be designed around convenience for the IT department rather than helping people do their jobs. I once worked somewhere where we were allowed to buy design SW but not allowed the manuals, they had to live in the IT department’s locked compound. £50k CAD SW dongle allowed to roam free in the labs, but you’re not allowed access to a £2 paper back book telling you how to use it.

oops….

Our current client on this Azerbaijan project (a large British based petroleum company) has a team with all sorts of e-mail addresses including hotmail!

I see that all the time, nearly all our customers are EMEA MNOs (Mobile Network Operators) and lots of their staff use hotmail/gmail addresses, mainly as they provide a better service than their corporate systems.

auto forwarding company emial to the personal address is (and has been) an absolute no no where I’ve worked.

what are you expected to use? Telepathy? RFC 1149?

Am I the only one who had to (sad enough to) google what RFC 1149 is?

If you were really sad, you’d have contributed to RFC 1149…

Company email belongs to the company. They say where it can and can’t stored. If users are away from the office they can either use OWA or company supplied devices. Forwarding company email to a personal account is strictly forbidden. For some companies there is legislation in place stating which country email can be stored. Forwarding to a personal account violates this.

I agree with the comment regarding many IT departments running IT to suit them rather than the business but this is usually down to laziness, incompetence or both. IT should underpin the business. If a risk or disagreement is identified then both should work together to resolve.

If they are restricting it to company phones only I’d guess when they find out you are forwarding everything to a personal mail account they will be a little upset.

You could even be breaking Data Protection law by doing this.

Ask for permission before ever forwarding anything work related to a personal email, if it’s denied then don’t do it. By all means make it clear that it may make it more difficult for you to work outside the office, but if they are happy to accept that, you have to abide by their IT policies, however daft they are.

Sorry molgrips, what is a bad idea?

Auto forwarding work email to somewhere else. Especially google etc. Wasn’t it in the news recently that legally email is their property if you send it to their servers?

First rule of infosec ….

… Make it sound sexy and interesting by calling it “infosec” ?

Just for the record I am not forwarding my work e-mail to a personal e-mail account. I was wondering whether it would be a possible work around given the problem I have.

I know other more temporary sub-consultants who have used their personal e-mail for the same people. But not sure IT were aware this was happening and all arranged by the dept they were working for rather than going in through HR etc.

How will a work smartphone differ from a personal smartphone in the view of IT security? Just thinking if I can get agreement for my personal phone to be considered as a work phone if they won’t supply a work phone.

I was wondering whether it would be a possible work around given the problem I have.

There may be, but you can only do it with your company’s co-operation. If they say no, you have to find a way of getting them to say yes. Where I work you can use personal devices for work, as long as they comply with strict guidelines, but you still use the corporate email servers.

The device is one thing, the bigger issue with forwrding is that the email itself sits on Google’s servers. They can then (in theory) index it, hand it over to the NSA or whatever they like.

More to the point, the client have no idea where their information has gone. Your third party provider could have lower security standards than they do. So they could boast to their own clients that they have great security, but if people are forwarding stuff to external providers then they really have no idea if their security is good or not. And they need to. You run the risk of making a lot of people look very silly, which is very bad for commercial relations, and that’s a best case scenario.

It’s very basic stuff, in the same way that it’s basic not to leave company documents on trains, but I don’t think people realise it.

I read it as they’re disabling access to emails over activesync, which is a pretty horrible way to do it anyway.

If you’ve got a personal phone and they’ve got OWA then you should still be able to connect to the OWA API with your personal device and get your email in the normal way, probably

“How will a work smartphone differ from a personal smartphone in the view of IT security? Just thinking if I can get agreement for my personal phone to be considered as a work phone if they won’t supply a work phone”

I have a personal smart phone running Android and NitroDesk touchdown to access corporate e-mails. As to how it differs to my personal phone before when running active sync there are a couple of key differences.
1) The system is configured such that if the phone gets stolen I phone another number and they can remotely wipe the entire phone. It’s a risk I’m willing to accept.
2) Nitrodesk is a separate app so everything for the company is kept almost ring fenced from the rest of the phone.
3) ActiveSync (I think) is not very secure; Nitrodesk is running an encryption on the e-mail and outlook traffic.

It’s definitely not as slick as previous but I prefer it over having two phones.

I’m surprised your major british petroleum company working in Azerbaijan has people (even contractors) using personal accounts as that company (if it’s the one I”m thinking of) post an incident in the Gulf of Mexico has become very much more aware about the implications of using anything but the company e-mail for company communications.

Also, mail forwarding for any reason is usually a bad idea. If the destination address should ever have an issue (eg full inbox) it might auto reply with a message send failure. This will get recieved by the forwarding account, which will forward said message on to said full inbox, which will…. Then the whole internet breaks.