Laptop anti-theft, or protecting your mobile data, is a must for corporations and consumers. Almost half of workplace identity theft takes place because of mobile data. And the average value of the data on your laptop can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to a corporate spy or experienced identity thief. At the higher end of the scale, the value of the 26 million Veteran identities on a laptop lost over a year ago was estimated to be worth more than $100 million. Those are the types of computer security risks that can make your business unprofitable. But there are solutions.
Broken Window Theory: By removing graffiti and repairing broken windows in crime hot-spots throughout New York City, the NYPD was able to drastically reduce the entire city’s overall crime rate (not just the quantity of graffiti and broken windows), including thefts, burglaries, muggings, and murders. In other words, certain actions that we take (e.g. focusing on crime hot-spots rather than on every type of crime) can have a disproportionately positive effect on achieving our goal (e.g. lower crime rates). Business translation: you get a far higher return on investment for certain well-planned tactical strikes than you do for far more expensive strategic initiatives.
My point? In the world of workplace identity theft and corporate data breach, laptop computers are the biggest broken window. Not only do laptops account for a disproportionate amount of data theft, but training the organization to properly protect mobile computers has a radiant effect on all other types of identity protection. Good habits in one area breed good habits in others.
Stop the theft of corporate laptops (or personal laptops with corporate data on them) and you have eliminated approximately 50 percent of the entire data breach problem at a fraction of the security cost.
Laptop theft generally occurs in transit: airports, hotels, cars, commuter trains, conferences, off-site meetings, vacations, coffee shops, etc. Build laptop anti-theft training into your organizational culture of privacy:
Seven Laptop Anti-Theft Tips for Travelers
1.Laptop Anti-Theft Tip #1: Leave it at home. Okay, I know most of us won’t leave our laptops at home when traveling because we would be leaving our digital identity behind. But data theft goes through the roof on the road, so consider using your password protected iPhone or BlackBerry to keep in touch. If it is critical that you travel with your laptop, then…
2.Laptop Anti-Theft Tip #2: Carry less data. Stop carrying data on your laptop computer that you don’t absolutely need. If you don’t need to have client information on the hard drive, don’t put it there in the first place. If you have an encrypted VPN connection with your company, pull the files off of your corporate network once you are at your destination (e.g. work, hotel, meeting). Many executives that have hired me to speak to their organizations (and take computer data security seriously) have an inexpensive netbook (very small laptop) that they take on the road. Its only purpose is for travel. Instead of carrying all of their sensitive files on the netbook hard drive, they take only what they need for the trip, and still have the ability to access the Web, email, and any cloud computing software (Salesforce.com, Wordpress, etc.) during their travels.
3.Laptop Anti-Theft Tip #3: Use strong passwords. Passwords are the primary locks on our laptops. Make sure that you create an alpha-numeric-symbol-upper-lower-case password, like P@55w0rd! (do you see the hidden word that makes this easy to remember? By the way, don’t use this password). The longer the password, the better. I recommend passwords greater than eight characters. I use a password protection program that I love called 1Password (available for the Mac, which I use because I find it to be a safer computing platform). It allows me to use highly-secure passwords that I don’t have to keep track of in an unsafe way (a spreadsheet, in my phone, in Outlook).
