Café conversations cause confidentiality conniptions – survey

A majority of New Zealand CEOs and general managers are concerned that loose lips or an open laptop in a café will put their confidential business information at risk, according to a new global survey by business centre provider Regus.

The possibility of private information being electronically intercepted has had plenty of media play in New Zealand of late, thanks to the allegations contained in Dirty Politics (itself based on hacked messages) and the claims made by Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden about mass surveillance at Kim Dotcom’s “Moment of Truth”.

However, the survey, which canvassed over 22,000 respondents in more than 100 countries, was focused on the dangers of good old-fashioned eavesdropping or someone covertly reading over your shoulder rather than more high-tech spying methods.

According to 70% of Kiwi respondents, cafés top the list of “risk spots” outside the office where business-related conversations or documents could be inadvertently compromised.

That’s followed by airline business lounges (62%), flights (61%), hotel bars and lounges (40%) and trains (22%).

At 4%, parks are considered the least risky public location – although the results don’t reveal whether that’s because parks’ wide open spaces mitigate against your information being seen or heard by lurking competitors or that New Zealanders have internalised the salutary lesson of the SIS operative who left a briefcase containing three cold meat pies and a copy of Penthouse in a park in 1981.

Globally, cafés were rated most risky (59%), then hotel bars and lounges (50%), flights (46%), airline business lounges (44%) and trains (22%).

Meanwhile, New Zealanders consider overheard mobile phone conversations most likely to expose confidential business information to potential competitors (76%), followed by people reading printed documents (61%), and people peering over one’s shoulder into an open laptop (57%) or smartphone screen (20%).

These perceived risks are a consequence of an increasingly flexible attitude to where and when people work, according to Regus NZ country manager Nick Bradshaw.

“The more mobile workers have become, the more they’re likely to overlook the risk of conversations in a cafe or airport lounge or the laptop that’s open with P&Ls and presentations and all manner of info,” he says.

“You carry your desk with you on your phone or laptop while wrapped in your own bubble,” says Mr Bradshaw, “and that has inherent risks.”

Mr Bradshaw agrees a modicum of mobile phone etiquette would go some way to reducing that risk.

The Regus survey results contrast with a recent NBR member subscriber poll, in which 58% of respondents said they weren’t being more careful with their emails since Dirty Politics’ release.