Week 6- Security Risk of Using Personal Devices while travelling in public transportation

Research conducted by PublicTransportation.org concluded, "In the year 2013 Americans took 10.7 billion trips in the public transportation" proving the record high ridership. In the world, of all trips made to and from work  35% use public transportation and underdeveloped countries are at high end of using public transportation, Whether the intent is to commute to work or non work related, most of commuters use mobile devices for communication, browsing, listening music, taking photographs, playing games etc. While using these devices some way or other these devices use the public networks which are unsecured and posses high risk of security. Public transportation commuters are even accessing the company data on the unsecured and unknown networks. Unsecured data can easily be exploited by the elite hackers using the public Wi-Fi networks and use them against the company security data networks. Some travelers even use the public network for the company task while travelling and or talking to the colleague regarding important work related data posses threats in company privacy policy. 

It is equally important to protect the personal information while using these mobile devices because you never know who you are travelling with and using the cellular phones or laptops or tablets openly gives opportunity to the criminals. Openly texting, entering personally identifiable information, entering banking information, displaying work related information while  travelling in the public transportation should strictly be  considered as vulnerable. On the other hand, if  any suspicion is occurred that someone is watching your messages, works then you should confront the individual asking the intent and report the issue to concerned authority if unusual behavior is noticed. If you feel company data is shared then the action should be notified to the security team as soon as possible. 

With increasing Security risk, companies are moving towards "Bring Your Own Device (BOYD)" policies  which will force security team to conquer mobile device management in order to maintain the company data and network security. 

To conclude, using mobile device in public transportation should be strictly be monitored and using company data in public networks should strictly prohibited. If any suspicious activities are noticed, confront them to ask the privacy of the usage and if in any case company data is compromised then notify  to the IT security team as soon as possible. 

References:

http://www.worldmapper.org/posters/worldmapper_map142_ver5.pdf

http://www.publictransportation.org/news/facts/Pages/default.aspx