If you have confidential data in your workspace, be ready to identify potential security risks in the form of employees wearing smart glasses. Employees who were not hired to surveille the surroundings for the safety of others, and employees who require no assistive technology, may be wearing smart glasses in secure workspaces containing confidential data.
Unfortunately, there is a subset of the human population that lean toward destructive gossip or voyeurism as a means to degrade, harass, embarrass, mock, or blackmail other employees. At some point you may encounter them in or near your secure workspace. It is risky to divulge any kind of confidential information to this subset, their actions could put employees or confidential data at risk.
One method of identifying security risks such as this is by installing a mobile application like Nearby Glasses (https://nearbyglasses.com/). This app is available for Android as well as iOS. The ‘Nearby Glasses’ app is a mobile app that will alert you to anyone potentially wearing smart glasses in your vicinity. It is not 100% accurate, it can give false positives when things like virtual reality headsets are in use nearby. See the image I have included with this article for what the app looks like when it detects possible smart glasses (the canary hides its face and is surrounded by caution tape when smart glasses may be near you, it also has an audible alert you can turn on in the settings area that will beep to alert you).
Use apps like this as a tool to highlight potential risks around you in secure spaces. For your own safety, avoid confronting any employees wearing smart glasses directly. If recording in secure areas is not allowed in your organization, then report it through appropriate channels and ensure no confidential data is visible in your workspace (e.g. turn off computer monitors when the employee enters your workspace, turn over any paperwork you are currently working on, avoid sharing confidential details in meetings where this employee is present).
Many news articles highlight the use of smart glasses in the workplace as innocent, useful, and fun. They also inaccurately note that it is easy to identify when smart glasses are recording (it is not, it is easy to disable visual alerts on many models so no one has any idea they are being recorded). Smart glasses offer fantastic benefits to the visually impaired, hearing impaired, jobs requiring language translation, law enforcement jobs, the list of benefits is lengthy. Do not let these benefits cloud your judgement when you discover a coworker (who is not security personnel and who requires no assistance due to an impairment) has been filming you and workplace confidential data without your knowledge or consent.
Good luck:)
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