Author: Deborah Gonzalez
ISBN No: 97801 2800 0694
Review date: 18/04/2024
No of pages: 88
Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann, Elsevier
Publisher URL:
http://store.elsevier.com/Online-Security-for-the-Business-Traveler/Deborah-Gonzalez/isbn-9780128000694/
Year of publication: 03/09/2014
Brief:
Online Security for the Business Traveller
price
£8.24
Online Security for the Business Traveller by Deborah Gonzalez is a short book that covers a lot of ground, literally and metaphorically. The moral of this book; security does not stop when you pack your suitcase, or unpack it again.
It’s a book full of useful hints, offering best practice generally for someone in business, besides in personal security. Just as it might be easy to overlook security with the rush of excitement of travel, or simply the rush to get to the plane on time, so it is easier to overlook security on your return home. Run anti-virus software on your computer before you connect again to your networks, he advises.
Social media allows us to share information with those we want to share with and, unfortunately, with those we do not. Many of the social media platforms also ask to include your location, acquired through the GPS in your smart device. This is how Foursquare, a social media app that permits users to check into different places, works … this advertises where you are at the moment of check-in, alerting those who follow you and some who don’t. Make sure to check your privacy settings so your information is not public.
As for that old IT security issue, wi-fi being insecure, the author writes: “We have been warned about the security risks of using public unsecured Wi-Fi networks to connect to the internet and access data. However, that doesn’t seem to stop many of us.” Best steer clear of hotel (and taxi) offers of wi-fi, he advises.
All that said about the risks that come with ever-easier communications, we can learn from no end of apps, whether for women travellers’ personal safety, about anti-bribery laws not to fall foul of, or where not to breach laws on government censorship of social networks (in China, for instance), or apps to pass the time on the plane or to help you fall asleep on a flight. As the book points out, using an app to for instance tell others where you are can be good (your employer can track you and know you are safe) or bad (you can be stalked or become a victim of espionage).
The book is up to date enough to feature the vanished Malaysian Airlines jet MH370, which (months later) suggests that all the tracking technology still allows an aircraft to physically vanish. The book also speaks of ‘virtual kidnapping’; if your phone is stolen, you are not kidnapped, but might extortionists be able to claim to your employer that you are, and demand a ransom? Answers to this may be simple awareness, or an agreed codeword. At the end of each chapter are checklists. The book closes with a futuristic vision of travellers gliding through border control and on and off planes thanks to biometrics; but as the author adds, we’ll still be leaving a digital trail of ‘breadcrumbs’ from our devices, which need to be secured.
Online Security for the Business Traveller by Deborah Gonzalez. Published 2014 by Butterworth-Heinemann, Elsevier. ISBN: 97801 2800 0694. Online price £8.24, 88 pages.
Visit http://store.elsevier.com/
