A couple of months ago we were watching "An Inconvenient Truth" here at home, but just a little bit into the movie we had to stop; my 7-year-old was so scared by the facts and projections that he started to cry. So I watched it later when he was asleep. The facts are scary, as are the projections and predictions.

I am so thankful that I rarely have to drive to any other location to do my work. Not only do I save gas, I also don't send the emissions in the air. Plus all the other savings from no more dry cleaning (I now use Dryel when I need to) because I don't need to wear business clothes very often, fewer car washings, and many other things.

Wouldn't it be great if more people could work from their home offices? Even for 1, 2 or 3 days a week, the amount of gas, emissions, and all the other pollution associated with people driving to work and back at an office could be greatly reduced.

This is another good argument to strenthen security; that of promoting mobile computing. By having stronger security and promoting more work from home for the job positions that this would work well for, organizations could have an impact on the environment.

Many organizations now are actively looking for ways to lessen the pollution their business and facilities operations cause. Tell your business leaders that one way in which your organization can make noticeable changes is by urging work from home, and that you can do this securely if you:

* Have strong, consistently enforced, mobile computing policies with supporting procedures

* Encrypt personally identifiable information (PII) on mobile computing and storage devices

* Provide personal firewalls and malicious code prevention software loaded on all mobile computers

* Provide physical security devices for mobile computers and storage devices

* Provide training for mobile workers to ensure personnel know how to protect their computers in the home environment

By allowing people to work at home there will also be less need to maintain full facilities at all times, so more lights could be turned off, less water used, less heating and cooling, less papers products used within the cafeterias and bathrooms, less soap and detergents, less electricity from fewer computers and other electric devices being turned on all the time, and so many other ways.

So by providing the security to allow work from home, the impact on greening the planet would not only be from the savings on fewer commuter vehicles, but also from so many other ways within the company.