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Written by: 11/9/2010 8:54 AM
I had been out of the office for a week-long vacation. It was so nice to get away, but I was inevitably coming back to hundreds of emails, most of which were no longer relevant. There was also the pile of hard mail—mostly junk—but I did find something that gave me pause.
Amid various advertisements for seminars promising to make me a better manager/organizer/planner/speaker was a particularly eye-catching, intricately-folded mailing. Its high-color graphics and edgy fonts enticed me. And it promised that if I looked inside, I would not be disappointed.
What I found was the basic sales pitch in a glossier package. But this one had another twist: a free sample, the first few chapters of a life-changing book on CD. Just pop this into your computer and you will be on your way to realizing the awesome power of the life-altering time management system being advertised.
Of course, I ignored the flashy marketing and threw it away—and not just because it was junk mail. For me, putting a CD in a drive without knowing ahead of time what's on it is about as prudent as eating something unrecognizable I found on the sidewalk. There could be all sorts of nasties on there, and who knows how—or if—I would be able to reverse the damage.
But that's me. What if a mailing like this had gotten to one of my less tech-savvy coworkers? How many of them would have loaded the CD and all of its self-extracting mischief? How quickly would our carefully guarded network been compromised because of simple curiosity?
As I thought more about this, I realized that my company—and yours—can't wait until something like this happens to address this type of issue. By then, it will be too late. Most of our employees are used to hearing that they shouldn't open any unexpected email attachment. Now it's time to remind them that hi-tech threats can come via low-tech deliveries.
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