Do you adhere to a clean desk policy?
Friday, December 8, 2017 at 05:33AM
A clean desk policy ensures that all important documents, confidential letters, binders, books, etc are removed from a desk and locked away when the items are not in use or an employee leaves his/her workstation. It is one of the top strategies to utilize when trying to reduce the risk of security breaches.
Having a clean desk helps to not only eliminate clutter, but also helps prevent the likelihood that anyone can gain access to your company’s information or the information of your clients. Clean Desk Policy - 5 Ways to Improve Your Security
Even after working in IT for 25 years, you still come across a new term now and again. For me this week, it was "clean desk" as applied to technology security. As part of our physical security assessment portion of our comprehensive network audit, we are getting dinged on not enforcing staff to have "clean desks."
Yes, I've long understood the need to lock one's computer screen when not at one's desk. And there is the long-running joke about folks writing passwords on sticky notes and attaching them to their monitors or under their desktop blotters. But thinking of sensitive documents, address books, keys was not really a part of my thinking when it came to keeping data safe. Seems data come in other formats than digital - imagine that. I did not connect the years I spent carefully locking my red spiral bound grade book carefully in my desk drawer when out of the room with today's clean desk policy.
Anyway, I am finding the physical security portion of our network health audit very interesting - and it may drive an initiative to make all our staff - and students - more contentious about leaving data in all formats just lying around.
So, if walked by your desk would I see only coffee rings?
Reader Comments (3)
The law firm I used to work at had a policy that anyone in IT who did not lock or log off a computer when they were not there could be "dinged" by another IT person (sending an email using the other users account) - and that person would owe the entire department donuts. There were about eight of us in the department, and I think I only had to bring donuts once.
I still cringe when I see a student just walk away...
Good one. My favorite "trick" was when finding an unattended laptop, taking it to the school office and saying I found it unattended. Hope it raised the anxiety level of folks enough that they might think twice before leaving it behind. I think I remember to turn on my locked screen saver maybe 90% of the time. I am getting better.
Doug​
I also find it so relaxing to work in a neat and comfortable workplace. Even though I have a lot of work I didn't notice this because I feel boosted and motivated if my office is well - organized. Thanks for sharing this article. I also believe that it is important that we know the effect or impact of clean environment to us.