Protect Yourself from Laptop Theft

Protect Yourself from Laptop Theft

Posted by Dallas IT Solutions at 5:31 pm

by Mark Stone

There I was, staring at a blank document, trying to come up with an idea of what topic to base my weekly article on this week. Several different topics were coming to mind, but nothing stood out. As my mind started to wander off, I looked at my Apple laptop and wondered what I would do if I ever lost it. I think I’d have a myocardial infarction! Then it hit me: I can’t believe I haven’t written about laptop theft yet.

The statistics on laptop theft are downright astounding. According to Safeware, North America’s largest computer insurance company, 600,000 laptop thefts occurred in 2004. This accounted for $720 million in hardware losses; much worse yet is the $5.4 billion in theft of proprietary information. According to the FBI, 97% of stolen laptops are never recovered, and the chances of a laptop being stolen are one in ten. I could go on, but I’m sure you get the picture.

Gartner Group has stated that a whopping 73% of companies do not have specific security policies for their computers. Incorporating laptops into your company security policy is extremely important. Rules should be clearly defined as to what is expected of laptop owners. Due to the risk of having proprietary or confidential information being compromised, the best thing all of us can do would be to encrypt any sensitive data stored on the laptop.

What does it mean to encrypt data on a laptop? Encryption achieves the goal of making any sensitive data unreadable and unavailable to prying eyes. It’s just like when our web browsers jumble the information between our computer and our bank when we’re doing online banking. When a hard drive (or specific folders of a hard drive) is encrypted, it is done so with a key, or password, which is used to decrypt the information. Without that key, the would-be thief cannot get at that information.

Going through all the steps necessary to encrypt data on the hard drive is well beyond the scope of this article. The good news is there is a program available that is free to download and use that will go a long way in protecting your sensitive data. I encourage everyone to visit www.truecrypt.org, where you can find out more about how easy it is to protect your data. There is good documentation available on the site and the download is available for free.

The trickle-down effect of laptop loss and theft is becoming more severe as we retain more and more data. Encrypting the information stored on our laptops is just one large step to take in preventing the worst-case scenarios. The old adage of an ounce of prevention’ couldn’t be more appropriate for this issue. Take the time to protect yourself or your company.

For more information on protecting your laptop and encrypting your data, call Tech Central at 972.996.6650