Page 478 - Using MIS

Security Guide

are we proteCtinG them from me
or me from them?

I’m Justin, I work in operations. My boss asked me Fifty years: that’s how long it’s been since he carried
to join a committee the IS department just created. The that 40-pound adding machine home.
purpose of the committee is to determine our company’s His story got me wondering when the data security
3
BYOD policy. Well, that’s not quite right. The IS depart- problem started. Long before mobile devices, I think.
ment will determine the policy, but they want to hear from Twenty years ago, you could copy data onto a CD and take it
active mobile users before they do so. This committee may out of the office. Later you could use a thumb drive or take
be a waste of time. I don’t know. But I do meet some inter- it home on your laptop and, if you wanted to steal it, copy it
esting people from around the company. onto one of your home computers. Now, we can take data
It’s strange how fast things change. My grandfather on our own mobile devices if we want. So, mobile devices
worked for IBM in the 1960s. I saw him last weekend, and aren’t a new data security threat.
when I told him about this committee, he laughed. He said Now that I think about it, maybe it isn’t what I’m tak-
when he was working at IBM, he wanted to take an adding ing out that’s a threat; maybe it’s what I’m bringing in. The
machine home once. I guess all it did was to add and sub- IS department doesn’t know what programs I’ve got on my
tract; it didn’t even multiply. Anyway, he wanted to take it mobile device. That must be why they want to “configure”
home for the weekend to work on budgets, but to get it past it. They want to see that I don’t have malware that could
security on the way out of the build-
ing, he had to have a permission
slip signed by his boss and by the
facilities department head. I guess
the thing weighed 40 pounds. He
said there was no way he could take
a computer home then; it weighed
a couple of tons and needed spe-
cial power and an air-conditioned
room.
“BYOD!” he said, “They want
you to bring your own computer to
work? Crazy. I couldn’t even take
an adding machine out, and they
want you to bring your computer
in?” Then he asked, “What keeps
you from taking all their secret
data?”
“That’s one of the things we
talk about.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
Source: Jérôme Rommé/Fotolia

3 Bring your own device. From Chapter 4, pages 146–147.

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