How best to protect your pc when doing remote work?

[mikehende]

Hey Pete [and everyone else], I sometimes do remote support for a company, just an hour here and there whenever needed. They had 80 pc's which require maintenance every now and then so I go through each pc to like update their Kaspersky license e.t.c.

Sometimes after doing a session of maintenance I notice my pc starts acting erratically and I immediately do scans and sometimes I find some stuff but not sure if it came from doing the remote work. Is there anything I can do to prevent anything from affecting my work pc please?

 

[Tony D]

What are you using to access the remote machines? I use TeamViewer.

 

[mikehende]

Yes, we use teamviewer

 

[Tony D]

You should be fine using TeamViewer. My question is are the "stuff" getting into your computer not blocked by from getting in in the first place. What are you using for protection?

 

[mikehende]

I have Vipre, MBAM and SAS on my work pc

 

[Tony D]

Looks good. If they are active and watching what's coming in, they should be blocking the "stuff" you mentioned from coming in.

What kind of "stuff" is coming in? Can you post a scan log?

 

[mikehende]

I don't know what's happening and if anything is coming in for sure, I just know that my pc sometimes doesn't work right all of a sudden and the AV scans are coming up empty.

Like last night, I did an hour session then this morning I could not control the mouse until I restarted the pc.

 

[starbuck]

Hi Mike,

Sometimes after doing a session of maintenance I notice my pc starts acting erratically and I immediately do scans and sometimes I find some stuff but not sure if it came from doing the remote work. Is there anything I can do to prevent anything from affecting my work pc please?

2 things come to mind.
Malware across the systems:
TeamViewer should be ok, although there's always the possibility of cross infection... especially with the way that malware is developing.
But the possibility isn't that great.
TeamViewer is compatible with Ubuntu, so why not use this? you could boot into a Ubuntu live CD and be perfectly safe.

Memory Usage:
Running remote access does take a bit of toll on the memory especially when an errant process has a memory leak.

Have you checked Task Manager or Performance Meter to check the system after using Remote Access?

 

[mikehende]

I was thinking of Virtual Box but linux can work too, I will look into it, thanks. I was looking for a bullet proof option to continue using my windows as norm but guess nothing can 100% prevent malware from creeping in.

No I never thought of checking either TM or PM after a remote session.

 

[starbuck]

Like last night, I did an hour session then this morning I could not control the mouse until I restarted the pc

This is what makes me think about memory/cpu usage.
Obviously when you reboot the system everything is cleared.

Look to see if there any processes using a large percentage of the available CPU or RAM.
Use Performance Meter to see if CPU usage or disk usage are exceptionally high if so, look at Resource Manager to see more detailed info.

 

[mikehende]

Ok will do next time I notice something following a session, thanks.