English Labour MP Tom Watson today learned why logging off your computer is important when his office intern cracked what she thought a joke on his behalf.
What appeared to be a mis-step by the Member of Parliament bought predictable criticism from his enemies in politics and media, particularly given his role as a critic of News International.
The biggest risk in computer security are your staff and co-workers; they have access to your systems and the data saved on them.
In Tom’s case – like most business security breaches – the intern wasn’t being malicious, she was making a very valid point about a serious topic, it was her unfortunate choice of words that caused a problem.
Luckily for her, the boss has taken a mature attitude towards the problem – there’s many bosses who wouldn’t. So the intern seems safe unless the media can beat the story up further.
The moral for all of us is to log off or shut down our computers whenever we step away from them.
If we’re using public terminals in flight lounges, Internet cafes or hotels, then we should make sure we’ve logged out of our email, social media or banking services before the session ends.
Should someone leap on your system when you turn your back, you could find anything from your social media or email account used to send out fake messages about you being robbed through to your online bank balance being pillaged.
We often worry about evil, sophisticated hackers breaking into our accounts but often it’s these simple mistakes that let opportunistic thieves get our details.
Often it’s the simple things that bring us unstuck, so logging off is a good habit to get into. Tom’s intern is right.
This is also an issue for anyone letting others post to their account under their name. This can be seen as ‘efficient’ but really is a bad idea on many levels, one being as in this example, and another being that social media relies on people connecting with people and building some trust. There is no trust where there are random people posting and pretending to be you. It is a false economy to think that this is an effective way to go about building a quality network of some value.
Spot on, Lindy. The social media equivalent of “ghost writers” doesn’t work.
What’s more worrying is the number of businesses that share a single log on for multiple users to save money or for convenience. As Vodafone Australia found, that’s a train wreck waiting to happen.