Off-site security

Do your mobile sales reps look after the information relating to products, pricing, contracts, supplies, specifications, strategies and all that – not just the sales apps, spreadsheets and slide decks on their laptops, tablets and smartphones, but all the other sensitive and valuable corporate and personal data they carry or access? What about your roaming product/tech support and maintenance people? Your company doctor? The Board of Directors? Managers and business travelers generally? Workers catching up with email on their way home, or putting the final touches on a progress report while stretched out on the couch watching an episode of CSI?

Are they vigilant and alert? Do they have the faintest clue about the information risks around them, or what's expected of them in the way of information security and privacy? Do they care?

Portable ICT has revolutionized our lives to the point that we take it for granted these days. We've become blasé about it. No longer are we tied to the desk and landline. We can be reached almost anywhere at any time by friends, family and colleagues, including the boss, customers and associates. One-way pagers morphed into TXT messaging and SMS-RSI. Cellular telephones with power packs the size of Manhatten, the capacity of a flea and dreadful audio quality became multimedia smartphones small enough to wear on the wrist, while jogging. Embedded computing used to refer to dedicated Computer Numerical Controllers buried deep inside noisy industrial machines: now it includes subcutaneous things.

It's not just students doing homework. For some, working from home is a lifestyle choice, a way to mesh work and family lives seamlessly or at least to juggle dishwashing with helpdesking. For others, it's a necessity, squeezing a few more precious hours into the working week while being physically present and technically 'at home'. And 'home' tonight may be a bland concrete box in some anonymous city hotel, tomorrow a cab and departure lounge en route to the next bland concrete box.

Those are just some of the scenarios we have in mind for May's security awareness and training module. With a profusion of information risks and security controls to explore, preparing the materials involves drawing out the core themes and threading them into story lines that spark the imagination. Informing, engaging and persuading people is what we do. Must dash now: dishes to wash.