There has been a resurgence of talk lately about the virtues of telecommuting as a business continuity tenet – in the face of brutal snowstorms that have battered the East coast, and in relation to more long-term factors that could put a dent in productivity. Companies hoping to boost green initiatives are also interested in telecommuting as one way to reduce the company’s environmental footprint and cut down on employee gas consumption.

In fact, we’ve been talking about telecommuting recently, too, from a data security perspective. I was afforded a great opportunity to provide a guest blog on this subject for The One Minute Commute, which can be found here. This is mostly common sense information, but you’d be surprised how many times good employees with the best of intentions can put data security in jeopardy by mishandling it and, unfortunately, losing or misplacing it.

In their 2009 The Cost of a Lost Laptop study, the Ponemon Institute, an independent research center, found that 36 percent of their sample population had experienced a data breach due to a lost or stolen laptop, computer or other mobile device. Many, including responders to this study, cite a lack of training and awareness programs to encourage employees to be more sensitive to data security when working remotely. Further, if the organization is supplying employees with mobile devices, it is imperative that proper anti-theft and encryption solutions are employed. Encryption is not a cure-all for this issue, but it is a standout in the line of defense.

If there is a takeaway, it is simply this: don’t bury your head in the sand when it comes to this issue. Whether we like it or not, data is becoming increasingly mobile. While this may be beneficial to productivity, it might not be the best thing for security. Taking proactive data security steps will pay off exponentially in the long run.

Author:

Brian Lapidus
COO, Fraud Solutions

Tags: data security training, Ponemon Institute, telecommuting, The One Minute Commute

Categories: Data Security Issues.