When you’re on the clock to meet about sensitive information in a public space, sometimes you just rationalize that no one around you either cares or is in the same industry as you. We try to use codenames (I’m serious) to talk about confidential info, but sometimes, it’s just so tasking to remember those things we end up letting it all out to speed the meetings up.

From a managerial stand point, people are the weakest link. But now I’m wondering if awareness would be a simpler solution to these concerns. You can invest in encryption, certainly, but it might also help to simply conduct a (maybe in a half a day) seminar outlining to your staff the dos and don’ts of working outside the office. We may be the weakest link, but we might also be the cheapest (not easiest) to fix.

Valid point, although I think that the quality and volume of data being exposed is much greater too. You can read parts of a spreadsheet on a plane or train, but you are somewhat limited to the information therein. However, if you’re attentive enough to follow the keystrokes when they are inputing their username/password, the level of risk has increased exponentially. I also think that more people, thanks to technology, are mobile and work on the road today than before. But I do agree that we should not always blame the technology.