We see it everywhere – people on buses working on their laptops, people sitting poolside reading personnel files – and we wonder if these conscientious people are aware that the information can be seen easily by those around them.

Two recently observed cases highlight how we all need to be careful when working in public places because it’s often easy for others to see what you’re doing, especially when jammed together on a crowded Wellington bus or on a flight to Auckland.

One colleague on her morning bus ride was surprised to see a young man next to her use his laptop to write a detailed work email in easy view of other commuters. Perhaps the information wasn’t sensitive, but the point is that it might have been.

In another case, an enquirer messaged us because the person sitting next to her on the benches at a public pool appeared to be going through a pile of personnel documents taken out of a government office. While there was no way of telling if these documents were about him (which he is entitled to read whenever and wherever he wants) or if he was an employee working with other people’s information as he sat through his daughter’s swimming lesson, there is a lesson to be learned.

Use discretion

In an enclosed public space, if you can read the information, then there’s a high likelihood that those around you can also. It is said discretion is the better part of valour. While you might not think that working with personal information in public is inappropriate, it might be contrary to your workplace’s confidentiality and security policies. This article is both informative and instructive.

Working in public can also give rise to other kinds of data breaches, especially if the information is hard copy e.g. forgetting a folder on the bus or leaving documents in a bag in a car, which is then broken into. These are typical data breaches that have been reported to us and should be avoided. It would pay to wisely choose the type of work that’s done in public (the less sensitive kind).

Commuter research

Working outside the office can be a hard impulse to resist, especially if hours are spent commuting to and from work. Here’s a story from Britain about research into how much time commuters spend working while travelling.

The researcher, Dr Juliet Jain, told the BBC that smartphones and mobile internet access was causing a "blurring of boundaries" between work and home - and nowhere was this was more evident than on the daily commute.  

The British study found that 54 percent of commuters surveyed were using British Rail’s wi-fi to send work emails, something which raises other privacy concerns, mainly about the security of the network and the information travelling through it.

Hacking threat

The same reasons that make free public wi-fi attractive users also make them desirable for hackers. The biggest threat is when a hacker sets themselves up between a user and the connection point. The user would then be sending their information to the hacker who then relays it on while getting access to the information that’s being sent out.

As discussed in this Kaspersky article, there are technical solutions to prevent the loss of information in this way - such as the use of a VPN.

But usually people seeking to get on top of their workloads aren’t thinking about the risk of a data breach as they email or browse work files on the plane, train, bus or in other public places. They are just thinking of saving time. That risk is something that workplaces and employees need to develop a greater awareness about as we drift into that grey area between home and work.

Image credit: Commuting by Pinelife (via Flickr)

breach, data