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I use a laptop provided by work, which has (maybe for good reason, that does not need to be u for discussion here necessarily) some pretty restrictive IT Policies.

I use this laptop to VPN into our work network from home, using a Cisco VPN Client.

I am wondering, on a high level, but technical detail is also welcome:

Assuming I am able to get the Cisco VPN Client onto my private Laptop, and am able to use it to connect to my work's VPN from home: Would this be "fundamentally unsafer" than using my work laptop for this?

Both laptops would be connected to my wireless router at home in this scenario.

I would be glad to know the additional risk factors, and more broadly speaking, whether there is a secure way for IT departments to let their company´s employees' VPN into work or not, from the employees' private laptop(s).

Personally, I would expect that, since with technology "anything is possible", and with enough encapsulation/layers this should be technically feasible, or not?

Is there any way to eliminate the risks that may arise from the fact that an employee has complete control over his private laptop and networking environment (whereas he does not have complete control over his work lapotp), leading to more uncontrolled environments in terms of software installed on the private laptop, potential virus and hacking threats, network security, etc

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    Yes, it would be “unsafer.” You of course should discuss this with your IT department before doing this. There is a reason your work computer is restricted. If your company’s IT has done their due diligence you won’t be able to connect your personal laptop to the VPN. But if you can, it obviously opens their network up to attacks from an “unmanaged” computer. They may be fine with that, but it’s your responsibility to ask.
    – Appleoddity
    May 29, 2018 at 16:04
  • Absolutely, but since I unfortunetaly have more trust in the competency of the people on SE than in the competency of my IT department, and since this is a board where people like to give explanations, whereas in our IT department I sometimes have to deal with either incompetency or time pressure, leading to no explanations, I asked here ;) I am not sure if the IT in my company is smart enough to do it's due diligence or not. I simply don't know.
    – user2606742
    May 29, 2018 at 16:18
  • Added: I would like to know where exactly the added risk factors lie, and whether there is a reliable way in terms of security to allow employees to VPN into work from their private laptops, or not ;) Will add this to the original question as well.
    – user2606742
    May 29, 2018 at 16:21

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Assuming that your work laptop is locked down, you have no local admin rights, you only use authorized programs, visit only work websites, lock the screen, use a good password, etc, then IT has a reasonable idea of what can go wrong on it. Low risk of malware transmission to and from the work laptop, low risk of information leakage, and low risk of an attacker spoofing (pretending to be) you.

IT has no idea what programs are installed on your personal laptop, and cannot authorize or control any of it. There may be risks already, and there may be risks in the future. If you were to install the security software on an unsecure personal laptop, then there would be no guarantee that malware won't record your password when you type it, and allow some attacker to log in as you in the future. There are other risks possible as well, and IT won't have any idea about it on a personal laptop.

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  • Understood, and my ideas were going in the same direction regarding the risks you are mentioning in the controlled vs. uncontrolled environments. But still, not being an expert in the field of IT Risk Management but having a background and experience in IT, i would assume there is at least technically some "concept", using combinations of encapsulation, layers, encryptions, virtualization, etc to keep the VPN Access of my private computer fairly seperate from the "other parts" of my private computer
    – user2606742
    May 29, 2018 at 20:47
  • ... Maybe I am wrong, or thinking to idealized, but often I find that these idealized approaches lead to something...
    – user2606742
    May 29, 2018 at 20:48

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