Nobody wants their laptop stolen and nobody wants to leave their laptop on a train, but, it does happen and it happens regularly.
The cost of replacing the laptop is relatively low on the list of concerns of the business. Much nearer the top of the list of concerns is who now has possession of your business data, your intellectual property and personally identifiable information* and will it be misused? There’s also the actual loss of any data that was not backed up, and now, the new owner (possession is nine tenths of the law, yes?), unless you’ve acted quickly to report it to your IT support, will potentially have remote access to your entire business’ IT estate. Lower down the list, you have of course the inconvenience of being without your beloved laptop, sourcing a new laptop and booking an IT engineer to set it all up for you which would realistically take at least 24-48 hours from start to finish.
The good news! The cost effective technology is widely available right now to quosh every one of those concerns:-
- FDE – Full Disk Encryption – If your laptop is lost or stolen, and if your hard drive is encrypted, you can be confident in the knowledge that nobody can access the data or applications on there.
- Backups – Use OneDrive for Business, Google Drive or Dropbox to ensure any data you store on your local laptop (like your Desktop, Documents, Pictures folders etc) is also stored in the cloud
- Password, or rather passphrase – if you have a weak, easy to guess password, the above 2 measures could be useless. Remember, password length is key!
- Know how to access your data from any computer. This is usually in the form of an internet browser or your mobile phone. Knowing this, immediately makes you operational again. A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because their trust is not on the branch but on it’s own wings.
To conclude, your laptop should be 100% losable, it shouldn’t trigger a fine from the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office), it shouldn’t halt your workday and you shouldn’t have to redo any of your work. At worst, it should only cost your business the price of a laptop.
* To report a breach, you can call the ICO helpline on 0303 123 1113 or you can it report online.
