Thoughts on using a personal desktop as work machine?

[Bassmansam]

It all depends on what you're doing and the data you're handling.

For example, if all you use is word, excel and outlook and you aren't storing customer data then you will likely be okay. It's a bit of a minefield with GDPR though and a security audit would likely flag up loads of issues you haven't even considered.

I work for a college in the MIS department so it is a bit of a grey area. I am using their server though so no data is stored on my actual pc.

 

[placeholder]

It would be a security nightmare for me full time but apparently all bets are off when this working from home was thrust upon us 10 weeks ago. Im using my own computer and laptop and remoting into my work PC - Im saving the company resource by doing this as they were having to provide laptops for a lot of staff to enable them all to work from home. A couple of weeks ago I asked for an Office 365 licence so I didn't always have to remote in and they said no. Was seriously tempted to down tools until they provided me with a work laptop but felt that would be petty in the current climate.

 

[MatteRB26]

I use my own PC at home for development work. However we are a tiny company and I pretty much have full reign over IT.

Alternatively could get a better work laptop if possible and use your screens you have at home.

This is the similar boat that I'm in. At the moment we're a small development company and while I'm not any sort of tech admin (I'm a Front-End Developer) I helped build up pretty much our whole infrastructure from Azure, to our in-house build server (Company bought components, I built it, set it up etc.).

If I worked for a larger company I wouldn't even be considering having a "work drive" in my main PC for many of the reasons people have already outlined above. Just to be clear as well - I wouldn't be mixing my personal Windows install with work - it'd be an entire drive dedicated to work development.

 

[mid_gen]

I have my work PC at home now (24c/48t xeon thing), but at the beginning of lockdown I did establish with them it would be ok to setup a second windows drive on my home desktop, provided it was enrolled on the corp network, bitlockered etc.

 

[Quartz]

I'm thinking of going to work with a proposition of using my desktop as my main development machine.

I'm a former corporate IT guy.

Don't do it. Keep home and work physically separate. There are massive issues as others have noted. Get them to supply you with a suitable development machine.

 

[Pho]

I'd install your work environment on a VM like others have suggested. Then you can join it to the domain or whatever else you need where it can apply company bitlocker protection or whatever else you need and keep it all separate.

 

[LiE]

I use my personal PC for work but I work in the cloud so the only thing I have installed is Office and that isn't governed by IT. If I had to give any control or access then I wouldn't use my personal PC.

 

[TechMinerUK]

*removed*

 

[Quartz]

If you go the VM route, install the VM on a physically separate SSD.

 

[Jay794]

I have literally just had to do this, I started a job at the beginning of April, it wasn't supposed to be a work from home just but given the current situation, it is.

No worries, I have a decent setup (see sig) so not worries about any graphics design heavy tasks however, this is where my only issue cropped up....

So day 1, I'm ready to start the full on-boarding process, get all my email and other account access setup,

I consider myself very tech savvy, like most people on here I know my stuff when it comes to PC's, watercooling, etc... however I get a call from this no-name IT guy saying I need to install crap like MS Intune and Bitlocker on my PC in order to allow me access to the company portal

erm....no, I don't think I'll be doing that, how about you give me my login details and leave me alone to do my job...nope! can't do that, so that was monday

So the company has admin access to my entire PC, everything from my porn stash to any questionable downloads or software I may have installed on my PERSONAL machine

Wait a second, you couldn't source me a work laptop in time (despite having a months notice I was starting) so I do you a massive favour and say I'll use my PERSONAL PC to do my job until you can source a laptop

2 months later, my laptop finally arrives, I set it up myself, put bitlocker and all that crap on it that's required in order to do my job, remove everything company related from my personal PC, to then be told, that they need to create an admin account on my laptop......hmmmm...how about no. I already have admin access to install whatever software I need on this machine, I'm not going to give you access to create an account that allows you to remove my admin access and essentially limit and restrict my ability to do my job.

 

[MM-Seat]

It always shocks me what other companies policies seems to be with IT kit.

I've only ever worked in places with very locked down kit, I was pleasantly surprised I could plug in my own mouse at my current role.

 

[Theophany]

It's a nice idea OP, but if you work for a company with an even remotely competent IT department they will never in a decade of Sundays allow it. Way too much risk for the company.

 

[Mrs Seabiscuit]

I do use my personal pc to login into the cloud desktop at work.
Citrix being the only thing i have had to download to my machine.
I have no issue with it.

 

[dazzerd]

I'm confused how come you don't physically have the laptop at home in your possession. I must be missing something but what's the point of having a laptop if you can't work with it mobily

 

[Augustus]

Hi, so it looks like there's a potential future of remote working for me, which I am 110% thumbs-up for. I work in software/web development and currently have a work laptop, relatively well specced. i7-7700HQ, 1tb NVMe, 32gb ram... but even then it can become quite the chugger when thrown a lot of resource-intensive load at it - ie: multiple IDEs with a mix of small and large projects, Unit testing, code analysis etc.

snippety

What you are asking about it an actual thing, MatteRB26. It's called BYOD....Bring Your Own Device [to work].

Some companies have a policy for it and others don't. In my experience most don't. There are shades of grey within these policies and some employers will provide you with some or all of the cost towards the device and give boundaries to work within so that work can actually be done.

Personally i don't see it as a bad thing that you are looking to be more productive and any manager worth their salt would recognise this. Whether you being more productive is worth the potential hassle to them is likely to be the decider as this will be outside their comfort-zone if they have never heard of it. The easy option is just to say no. Your manager may say yes and then the IT dept say no. In my experience outsourced IT depts are likely to say no when your company hasn't got a policy for it. If you have an internal IT dept and you get along with them it helps.

Other posters have quite rightly pointed out pitfalls of this and the determinate probably has to be what level of control and what responsibility you/employer has and accepts but if i've understood your setup correctly it's one of the simplest versions of BYOD i've come across.

AIUI, you're not using your desktop 'machine' but you are using some of your desktop hardware to facilitate booting a separate OS. In this instance i'd be wary of your 'desktop' SSD contents being visible to the 'work' install if you have them both connected at the same time to the same hardware. There are probably lots of options on how to solve this so pick the one you're most happy with.

I'm now wary of using work devices for anything personal after the law ruled any data on work devices belongs to the employer but in your case as long as you have one SSD not visible to the other you wouldn't be sharing any data across.

As long as you've thought about it enough (write a pro/con list and use the replies in this thread as indicators) and can justify it to yourself and your company then go for it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

 

[happy_2008]

I doubt compliance would approve of this!

 

[memyselfandi]

The simple question is what is your companies policy on this? Most places I've worked specifically state you cannot connect personal systems to the corporate network, or VPN, (with some exceptions).

The only exception I had was at my last place we were with a byod pilot where one of the options was to run a VM on your own hardware which was enrolled via intune giving it the same security settings, encryption and software as a standard build. It could then connect to the work network via VPN. If it went down we had our work laptops still and to fix was literally case of running up a new windows 10 VM and re-enrolling it. But we were in a special situation where a lot of work was not possible via the corporate lan anyway

 

[randomshenans]

I doubt compliance would approve of this!

We'd never be able to do this at work at all. They can't control what you have on your PC and if it's up to date and compliant from an IT security point of view. Never in a million years.

I'd never even offer it personally, for a lot of the reasons mentioned above. What if it breaks? Your downtime then is on you to fix, when it's not something that should be your issue. The people saying they do it and RDP to a remote server, you're not really working off your machine, you're working on a remote server. I'd request they get you a better machine if the one they have provided for you isn't good enough.

 

[happy_2008]

We'd never be able to do this at work at all. They can't control what you have on your PC and if it's up to date and compliant from an IT security point of view. Never in a million years.

I'd never even offer it personally, for a lot of the reasons mentioned above. What if it breaks? Your downtime then is on you to fix, when it's not something that should be your issue. The people saying they do it and RDP to a remote server, you're not really working off your machine, you're working on a remote server. I'd request they get you a better machine if the one they have provided for you isn't good enough.

Thoroughly agree with this, i keep work and personal seperate. I would never entertain using my own personal PC as a work PC (Unless via RDP obviously).

 

[BongoHunter]

I'd get work to by you a workstation laptop - like on of the new hp zbooks with loads of cores, memory and NVME storage rather than give access to my home machine to work