My first reaction to this story was, wow!, that’s harsh, but then I read on and saw that, against company policy, the data wasn’t encrypted. And I started to wonder how I’d feel if I was the CTO, or IT Manager, or whoever is responsible for Boeing’s personal computing infrastructure. From the article:

Jim McNerney, Boeing’s chairman, president and chief executive, said the breach of company policy was so serious that some Boeing managers also will be disciplined.

I think Boeing have got it dead right; this doesn’t just stop with the person taking that laptop off-site. There must be a reason for that user not encrypting their data, and I suspect responsibility for that lies at the feet of the people running Boeing’s IT as much as it lies at the feet of the user.

Think about it – why do you not do some things? Usually because they take too long, or they’re too complicated, or both. Would you forget to set your burglar alarm? No. Would you forget to lock your front-door before leaving the house? No. The reason that you don’t is because setting the alarm and locking your door are simple, 5-second jobs.

Using IT security should be that simple, too – a 5-second job that quickly becomes second nature. If you’re responsible for IT Security in your organisation, put yourself in the shoes of your users and tell me; is your security so easy to use that your users would never take unencrypted data off-site….?

[tags]EFS, Boeing, IT Management, CTO, encryption[/tags]

I bought the Opera browser for my DS Lite yesterday, and couldn’t get it to connect with my wireless AP at home, despite configuring Opera correctly and despite my router being on the compatible list. I looked at Draytek’s website and the firmware I was running was one version out of date, so I thought that upgrading to the latest version probably wouldn’t hurt. HA! About 75% through the upgrade, the upgrade applet threw out the ominous words, “Timeout. No Response from router”. Uh-oh.

To cut a long story short, it is totally fubar. I can ping any IP address and get a response back. My router now thinks it is the entire Internet… “Mmwuuahahaha!”. Bloody thing.

Anyway, in order to be productive today, I packed up my laptop, my phone, my DS Lite, assorted power adapters and batteries and came in search of a wireless hotspot. Living in a small market town in central England, I thought this would be a mammoth task. As it turned out, the first place I tried did have a hotspot. Not only did it have one, it was free to use!

So, here I am working in a small-town coffee shop and getting strange looks from some of the people who come in. I feel like I should be writing an article for Web Worker Daily! I’m guessing that if this was Silicon Valley, I’d get strange looks for sitting in a coffee shop without a laptop.

Two things strike me about my situation today. First, how isolated I felt the moment I realised that I had no way of connecting to the outside world from home. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t have TV, so I use my net connection for news and entertainment, as well as for work and communication. Second, how comfortable it felt packing up my mobile office and setting up in a coffee shop. It makes a nice change to working in my office at home. Now I know it’s here, this could become a regular habit.

I’d be interested to know if you’ve had similar experiences – were you forced to find somewhere else to work; is it a public place, and do you enjoy working there? Do your work habits change when you’re working in a coffee shop, rather than an office? Let me know.

[tags]web worker, wifi, hotspot, wireless, telecommuting, work from home, freelance, telework[/tags]