Divisive Devices

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  Business Intelligence   Communications Management   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   Strategy   Talent Management  

People might think that with the proliferation of the number of mobile devices out there, there is less likelihood that your own individual unit will be stolen. That sounds similar to the logic that if more of us speed on the road, there is less of a chance that any one of us will be caught. Unfortunately, neither one of these situations is true.

Certainly though, prices and access to these devices has improved. With more of us using them however, there are increased risks. As vulnerable as a purse or wallet, they have the capacity to carry even more crucial and sensitive data. Access to finances of course, but also access to our identities and the information we bring with us from our business lives as well. And yet we nonchalantly do things like use them in public bathrooms (dropping them in places we shouldn’t), leave them on top of our vehicles (driving away and having them fall who know where), donate and discard them willy-nilly (without regard for what is stored on them) and, while it may seem safe, operate them in areas with unsecured connectivity.

How you access information makes a difference. Secure industrial connection vs. WiFi from a coffee shop--notice any disparity between the two? Privacy and confidentiality hardly seem possible in an open access environment. Think about it this way: Would you talk openly about a sensitive family matter in a …

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