1. Plan a vacation or event that requires you to be away from your practice and/or home

2. Be courteous to your clients, friends and family (and ANYONE ELSE who might send you an email and/or ping you via IM) by enabling your “Out of Office” and/or “Away Message”.

3. Create a specifically worded auto-reply: “Hi – I am out of town for several days/weeks. If your message is urgent please contact my assistant, ________ @……..”

Every day, professionals, in a courteous effort, inadvertently advertise their mobility (read: away-ness), giving advance notice to friends, family, clients and criminals that they will not be protecting their fortresses. Usually by giving an exact address in the signature line of their email.

We suggest a less overly informative away message:

“Due to work responsibilities, my email is being filtered until March 23rd Please forward any email to Jane Smiley@myfirm.com” or “Due to work responsibilities, my email is being forwarded until March 23. Your email is being forwarded to my assistant, Jane Smiley and you will be contacted shortly.”

It’s a hard bit of reality to accept, but the very technologies we employ to make our personal and professional lives more efficient and convenient, also enable lapses in security we might not immediately realize.

BNI Operatives – Street Smart, Web Savvy.

Stay Safe,

Jonathan Caspian

Filed under: away message, email, law firms, practice, secure, technologies