#WeekendWisdom 020 Working from Home and Data Protection
welcome to #WeekendWisdom number 20. This week we’re going to talk about working from home and data protection.
Yep! I’m Working from Home for the first time.
Now that the #COVID19 pandemic has truly gripped the planet, lots of employers are asking their employees to work from home. If you’re in the situation for the first time your employer probably has provided you with a laptop or a tablet, or some device to be able to do this work from home.
If they have done this they probably also have given you some kind of secure way of connecting into the company emails and into the company file data storage. Your IT support might also have given you guidance on things you need to do to keep that machine safe and secure while you’re working from home. So please do follow those guidelines.
So Working from Home and Data Protection, what do I gotta do?
But if you’re working with personal data you really, really want to be very careful about that device and how you use this device in your working from home environment. For example you might have younger people in the house and it can be very tempting to let them play with this device or use this device to access the internet, when you’re not working with it. You must resist that temptation because that device contains potentially sensitive data. You cannot let the young people get access to that data. It must be kept secure.
What about paper personal data?
Similarly if you were printing things at home and particularly if you’re printing sensitive personal data, so things like health information or religious, political persuasions, that type of information.
Sensitive Personal Data:
- Race/Ethnic origin
- Political Opinions
- Religious/Philosophical beliefs
- Trade Union Membership
- Physical/Mental Health
- Sexual Orientation/Sex Life
- Genetic data
- Biometric data
If you’re going to print that out at home you really need to be able to secure those printouts, those hard copies appropriately and as securely as it would be in the office. So you really shouldn’t want to be printing that stuff out.
So that’s it for this week. Let’s be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.