Secure Travel Device Loaner service provides peace of mind

February 20, 2020

The Secure Travel Device Loaner service allows faculty and staff to bring only the bare essentials when traveling. This is especially valuable when traveling to parts of the world where data theft is common. There also may be confidential trips where Yale faculty and staff need to maintain anonymity.

The challenge

There have been several news reports related to secure business travel. As a result, our Information Security team created the Travel Securely website, outlining best practices for traveling securely. We received a flury of requests after publishing this content, most notably, providing coaches of the men’s basketball team loaner computers when the team visited China. We used available recycled equipment and had to scramble to get enough computers ready for the trip. It was clear that we had to provide a long-term and sustainable solution for the community.

Using Yale’s IT services to solve the problem

We discussed solutions provided by peer institutions and settled on purchasing a number of Apple and Windows laptops dedicated for travel for use with a new service offering. Not only can faculty and staff leave the majority of their data at home when traveling, but upon it’s return, we ‘sanitize’ the equipment before it reconnects to our network. This eliminates significant risk. 

The results

Since launching the service this past fall, we have received many requests for secure travel loaner devices. Feedback from individuals using the service describe it as easy to use and helpful. Additionally, we are exploring suggested enhancements to make travel more secure and less stressful for our faculty and staff.

To learn more, view the Secure Travel Device Loaner request form or the Secure Travel Device Loaner service page.

Service Quality