If you’re not locking your computer, you’re inviting unwelcome visitors

How often do you leave the front door of your home unlocked when you are gone? Or leave your car keys in the ignition when you park downtown? How about a safe full of valuables? Would you leave that open, too? The Asante Security team is asking these questions since a number of employees are leaving their Asante workstation without logging off or locking it.

Behind the open “door,” or portal, of an open Asante workstation lie troves of private patient information, the expanse of the Internet and Asante’s rich computer network of servers, databases, workstations, printers and medical devices. This vast infrastructure of systems and data enables patient care and maintains critical business operations. Don’t leave it open for anonymous use. Don’t treat it carelessly.

A recent survey from a top global security research firm found that employee negligence accounts for 56% of internal corporate security incidents. To prevent such mishaps, Asante’s annual Elements training reminds all employees to always log off or lock a workstation before leaving it unattended.

Reports of open workstations to the ITS Service Desk, as well as ITS staff facility walkthroughs, indicate that not all employees are complying with the workstation lock-or-logoff rule, even though the time required to badge out of a workstation, use a mouse and click, or apply the CTRL/ALT/DEL “three finger salute” takes less than a second.

The Asante Security Team wants you to know that you protect yourself — as well as Asante and its patients — by logging off or locking your computer each time you leave it unattended. Any activity that occurs on that computer after you leave it open will be attributed to you, at least until the computer is properly logged out from your user account.

ITS can combat many of the serious information security threats aimed at Asante through firewalls, system monitoring tools and anti-malware products. But employees are a major component of Asante’s security strategy; they must be Asante’s human firewall.

Please, log off or lock your computer when you leave your desk. Every time.