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GCN Home > 05/22/06 web stories

When you take work home, make sure security goes with it

By William Jackson, GCN Staff

One of the great things about mobile computing is that it’s mobile. You can take data anywhere. The bad thing is that it’s mobile—someone else can take your data anywhere, too. This includes data on laptops, key drives, personal digital assistants, rewritable CDs, and even hard disks, plus data over remote connections between your home PC and a server at work.

As I write this, the Veterans Affairs Department has just told the world that one of its employees lost personally identifiable data, including Social Security numbers, for about 26 million veterans. It’s not clear yet what form the data took or on what medium it was stored on when it wandered off. So far, it appears no one has used the information.

The fact is laptops, PDAs, etc. are used so routinely they become just another part of your wardrobe, and familiarity breeds contempt. The data you put on a mobile system may be just another night’s work to you. But it could be worth millions to someone else, and no matter how routine the work you’re doing, government workers should be prepared to treat it as if it were worth millions.

The cardinal rules of mobile security should always be as follows: If you don’t absolutely, positively need to have sensitive data on a laptop, for instance, don’t put it there. If you do need it, don’t leave it there any longer than necessary. And if you absolutely, positively must take it home, to another office or to a hotel somewhere, secure it.

A diamond merchant would not bring a case of jewels home and leave it lying around. A government laptop shouldn’t be treated any differently.

But let’s be reasonable. You’re not going to put a laptop in a titanium case with a time lock and handcuff it to your wrist. People are going to continue to put sensitive data on mobile devices and leave them sitting in unsecured offices, on trains and in the back of taxis.

A survey of 935 cabbies in nine countries by Pointsec Mobile Technologies Inc. turned up 85 notebook computers, 227 personal digital assistants and 2,238 cell phones lost in cabs in the second half of 2004. An estimated 4,425 notebooks are thought to have been left in Chicago’s fleet of 25,000 cabs alone.

More news on related topics: IT Security, Authentication / Identity Management, IT Management



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