---
title: "Security is a piece of cake"
description: "A few weeks back I ordered a cake for the office. Really good one, one of my favourites and everyone liked it."
date: "2017-11-29T11:05:56+00:00"
category: "Security"
excerpt: "A few weeks back I ordered a cake for the office. Really good one, one of my favourites and everyone liked it."
reading_time: "2 min 12 sec"
image: "/uploads/images/sites-default-files-2024-03-piece_of_cake.jpg"
image_alt: "Piece of cake on a plate"
path: "Insights > Security is a piece of cake"
---

Cream cheese tart made of cookie base, and the cream cheese filling decorated with dark chocolate, walnuts and hazelnuts. Ok, I might have got a bit too excited with that.  
If you’re curious how it looks check [here](http://www.cafeboulevard.ee/en/product/chocolate-and-cream-cheese-cake-2-kg/).

Now you might wonder why I’m writing about the cake? Well, pranking finally made a comeback to our Tallinn office. One day when I sat down behind my unlocked computer at the office I saw this line submitted “by me” in the #estonia Slack channel (we use mostly Slack for our internal communications across the company). The thing is that I didn’t write it.

!\[Screenshot of a Slack chat, where Peeter promises to bring cake to the office\](/uploads/images/sites-default-files-2024-03-the-cake-is-not-a-lie.png)

Now I could have just deleted the line and got annoyed by someone using my computer. Or I could’ve just laughed it off and done nothing. But I took this as a reminder I “messed up”. I left the computer unattended for a long period of time in the office. I probably felt safe enough doing so, and I got lucky for only having to get us some cake. It could have been much worse.

What it really was is a lapse in security. And the cake was the price I willingly paid for it in order to learn a lesson.

The key message of this story is that don’t leave your computer unlocked when you leave your desk as there may be co-workers who want cake, pizza, sushi or someone to clean the messy office storage cabinet. And guess what – it may be you who promises to deliver that. That’s what might happen if you leave your computer and accounts open…

It is a good practice to lock your screen when you leave your computer unattended. Not everyone is so good-natured like my co-worker with a sweet tooth.

After I got pranked, I wrote this story to our intranet and started a new tradition at Mearra of pranking everyone who forgets to lock their computer by these good-natured promises – let’s hope it helps people to keep their computers locked! The rules are that it needs to be a level of a prank that’s acceptable by everyone. The main idea is to use this new tradition as a security awareness training. I’ve also requested my fellow co-workers to then share their stories in the general chat room of the whole company.

I personally did learn my lesson here and in a very sweet way.

The same way as you should keep your computer safe, take the necessary steps to ensure your platform is as sturdy as possible with our security audits.