Hi all,
My work prohibits working away from my province, or country.
So I bought a static VPN and I’ve been telecommuting around the world.
Is there a chance my employer will find out?
Yes, there is absolutely a non-zero chance they will find out.
Stop doing stupid stuff with your company data.
You’re the person Infosec called me about. Expect a call from HR shortly. The lengths people go to deceive the employer is sad. We have to protect from our workers more than outside threats.
If you are willing to risk your job to travel then it shouldn’t matter.
Yes, they can tell by the IP address that it’s owned by a VPN provider.
Possibly if they have Citrix security and performance deployed and its watching where you’re signing in from to detect suspicious logins. The reciever app will try to connect in as soon as you login.
Do you have a company cell phone? They will probably find out faster through that. Some companies also have tracking on their laptops in case one gets stolen. Our email filter will also check for suspicious logins for our company email, so getting emails on your phone or laptop while not on the vpn will alert us as well when it’s out of the country.
The fact that you’re able to install and use a VPN probably means they either don’t have you on a domain joined pc or you still have admin rights on it. I doubt they care enough about security to do all of that if this is the case.
We DO have plenty of ways to track this though, it’s a pretty big gamble.
Citrix studio/director collects all endpoint information. If infosec clamps down on who gets to come in through the gateway or with great suspicion that something is up, they can block that IP or have the citrix admin limit gateway access only from a specific range.
Like all things IT/security related, it’s really up to who’s managing and monitoring the system. You could have an inept IT department that doesn’t give a crap of who’s coming or going as long as 2FA is enforced.
Hi, IT guy here. Yes, the answer is yes. It just depends on how much they care. Sounds like they care. You are asking for an RGE, resume generating event.
Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely, probably not. Now, if you put in a ticket about Citrix being slow or any other performance related issue and someone starts taking a closer look at your session then they might find out. Even if they do find out you are going through a VPN, you could always play the “I use a VPN to keep my ISP from spying on me card” but that will likely fall through when they ask you to try connecting without it during troubleshooting.
If you really wanted to make it look like you are connecting from your home country, you could rent a Linux VPS and run your own VPN server that way you aren’t coming from a known VPN IP address. Or you could rent your own windows desktop in a Datacenter that you RDP into and connect to Citrix from that. That machine would then become your “work computer”. It sounds like your company has a BYOD policy so this would likely be your best option of the two.
At the end of the day though you should just find a company that values your work and not care about where you are working from that way you don’t have to deal with all the BS above.
If you use a travel router with a built-in VPN client, the client laptop will have no idea. It just looks like any other network.
Considering that this a Citrix subreddit, there’s a pretty good chance that Citrix employees are reading this…
You have plausible deniability when using a VPN. Plenty of people use a commercial VPN full-time from their home. As long as you don’t slip up and accidentally connect from a foreign IP there will be no evidence.
I just rented a physical server in a DC added a 10 vm on that and use that to jump.
But if I were more worried I’d have setup some kind of residential connection.
Then again I’ve always told them where I am, and they never objected
wow you must be fun at parties
I began using the VPN a month before hand to establish a “normal” behavior. Thoughts?
All assets are my own
RGE, resume generating event
LOL!
Good technical info.
I’m just chiming in on the last point - “work for a company that values your work, not your location”.
At least for my employer, the issue is not really where I work, but data access boundaries. Certain data, e.g. client data, are legally restricted to certain zones, so employees accessing from outside those zones would be putting the company into legal and security difficulties.
Just from that perspective - it’s highly unethical and selfish, to put an entire company, clients and your colleagues into risk - just for your convenience.
I’m not that moralistic though - haha.
This is the right comment
I am, thanks, if you want to be constructive feel free to come back and not spam a 2 year old thread.