Summary

This article provides information on how to effectively work from home using District technology.

Audience

This article is intended to be used by NLPS staff.

Equipment

All district WFH (Work From Home) equipment taken home will be in your care and custody. You are responsible for exercising all reasonable care to prevent abuse to, excessive wear, loss or damage to NLPS owned equipment or materials entrusted to your care. Please report any actual or suspected loss, privacy breach, or security incidents to your supervisor immediately.

Instructions

If you are working from home, please restart your laptop to ensure it receives a new IP address, as it may still be using one assigned and authenticated at a district site. District laptops are pre-installed with DirectAccess (VPN) which allows you to access SD68 resources such as the S: drive, H: drive, email, intranet, etc. With DirectAccess (VPN), your device will obtain an IP address from your home Wi-Fi network. If you don't restart your computer, you won't have access to any SD68 resources, including the SD68 web page, Intranet, and S Drive.

1. Select Start
2. Select Power
3. Choose Restart

How can I tell if I am connected to DirectAccess (VPN)?

A successful connection to DirectAccess will look like the image below.

Troubleshooting 

If you do not see the H: and S: drives after logging in, please follow these steps:

1. Power down your laptop
   Press and hold the physical power button for about 20 seconds to ensure the device fully powers down and doesn't just enter sleep mode.
2. Wait before powering back on
   Allow 1 minute before powering the laptop back on
   Then press the power button to restart laptop
3. Confirm network connections
   When the log on screen appears, wait 3 minutes to ensure the device connects to both your home Wi-Fi and the VPN (Direct Access)
4. Verify connection status
   From the log on screen, check available wireless connections
   Confirm the "School District 68 Direct Access" shows a status of Connected.

Information Privacy and Security

While working from home, the security and privacy of the information that you are entrusted with through your district-provided access are potentially placed at a greater risk of exposure than when working at the office.  For this reason, a increased level of security awareness and practices must be exercised.  For example:

• If you have a district laptop and are working at home, restart your computer first to ensure Direct Access is working. 
• Exercise greater care with your passwords; Refer to these tips on password safety (link) and avoiding email scams (link)
• Always secure and attend to your laptops and storage devices – don’t leave them unsecured when unattended
• Always lock your desktop when stepping away from it, even for a moment: use (Windows Key + L) to lock your screen without logging off
• Keep your assigned computer to yourself – it isn’t to be shared with unauthorized users, even family members
• Report any loss or breach or privacy or security to your supervisor immediately.

Additional Help

If you are still experiencing issues after attempting all of the steps outlined above, please contact the SD68 Helpdesk (Link)