Security Awareness - Cyber Security while travelling

CAVEAT - this is a post I wrote in 2017 and never published most likely due to me forgetting about it.
Read it at your will, I doubt much has changed but I'm not going to update the article as I'm working on the my Azure learning post. I'm sure I'll get around to it again.

The post:
Most of us now have these wonderful smart devices, we use them to view our emails, check our social media and a whole lot more! What's happening even more now is we are connected to our workplace through these wonderful devices. These devices should be treated as very sensitive devices given the amount of data that can be stored and viewed through these devices.

So what do I mean by smart devices?
Blackberry (what?)
Smart Phones
Tablets
Laptops

Can't forget about smart watches and hell if you try hard enough you can hack your fridge [ WIRED.com ] and use it for business purposes!

Even more common lately, especially if you happen to work for a nice company, you now have the option to work on the go/work from home. This makes it a lot more important that you and all users become more aware of security and especially staying secure on the road/at home.

So now that we have an idea of what is meant by smart devices and their uses what can we do about ensuring their security?

Let's work under the presumption that the device you have is already hardened pretty well, you have a phone with MobileIron configured, or you have a laptop with state-of-the-art encryption and secure connections to your workplace. You as a user need to put in place some simple but effective practices to make security great again!


1. Make sure your device is up-to-date.
This my friendly users is so very important. Not only do I mean install the latest Operating System updates, but also to have the latest Anti-Virus protection, your browser updates, adobe/java updates. While this is critical in the normal workplace it is even more critical while on the move!

2. Take what you need.
You're gone for three days, you'll be working on a specific project for the most part and might get a chance to touch on one or two other things. If that's the case just bring those one or two things with you.

Your laptop is six years old, one day you're sitting in the airport bar where service is a little lax, you get up to get another drink and forget to lock the laptop, you turn around not thirty seconds later and the laptop is gone. When's the last time you went through that six-year-old laptop and cleaned it out? If your answer isn't this morning then you've potentially lost six years worth of sensitive data and now your company will be a tad bit angry with you.

Keep it clean and only bring what you need