According to the FBI approximately 2M laptops are stolen each year. Even worse, only 2% are recovered.
Do you have a plan in place for tracking and monitoring all of your devices, both new and old? And when a device goes missing, how do you protect the data on it?
Imagine this scenario – You are driving home from your favorite coffee shop and all of a sudden you realized you left your laptop there! NOW WHAT? By the time you make it back there, it’s gone.
Well, the answer to that impending fear of “NOW WHAT?” depends on what precautions you have or haven’t taken prior to your laptop.
If you have properly encrypted your data, password-protected the access to your device, and shut down / logged off of all key applications, then you have a little more time to respond. If this is your work laptop, then the first thing you need to do is notify your IT department that you’ve lost your device. This will allow them to change passwords and lock access to applications and data a thief may gain access to via your unprotected laptop. They may also be able to remotely wipe the device to make sure no one will gain access to the data stored on your computer. This is why daily backup of your data is critical!
The best way to reduce your organization’s risk exposure is by proactively preventing a lost/stolen scenario before it happens. Prevention can start with these 4 things:
- Developing a clear incident response plan for your teams to follow when a device goes missing
- Identifying and tracking all devices and their purpose
- Enabling full disk encryption on all machines
- Maintaining up-to-date device configurations across the organization
Has your current representation helped you implement a clear incident response plan for your business? If not, The Bunker can help and we are ready to help you move from danger to a safe place, with us!