My Laptop Has been Stolen!

A savvy young executive left her laptop in the room at a hotel she stays at regularly while traveling. It was always safe in the room.  She knew the housekeeping crew by name and they knew her (so did hotel management). The laptop was sitting on the desk in plain sight while the housekeeping cleaned the room. The door was open.  A man, who apparently was walking up and down the hall looking into rooms, pretended to be her associate. He walked into the room, picked up the laptop and walked out.

Gone. Without a trace.

Laptop theft is more prevalent than you might realize, particularly doing the holiday period. All you (or an employee) have to do is turn your back for a few seconds and a backpack or briefcase will disappear. Sometimes after you’ve done everything right to secure your laptop it will still be stolen. Your data (company/personal financial information, sensitive communications, client communications, and intellectual property) are now exposed to the world. What can you do to protect yourself?

1)      Set passwords for accessing the computer. Make it hard for the thief to access the accounts on your computer. Some laptops come equipped with a finger print scanner…consider using it.

2)      Set passwords for accessing documents with sensitive information. In Office 2007, you can do this by selecting the Prepare Option, Encrypt Document.

3)       Encrypt your data. You can purchase a separate program that will encrypt data on your hard drive, separate and apart from what is available in MSOffice.

4)      Backup company data to a remote site. If the only copy is on a laptop, you’re in trouble.

5)      Install a program such as Laptop Lojack. There’s a chance you might be able to get your laptop back.

If your laptop is stolen and you didn’t take any preventive measures, then invest in LifeLock or one of the other identity theft protection products.

All it takes is a few minutes and a little forethought to save yourself a lot of future pain.

If you have questions, contact your favorite IT service provider or feel free to DM me @ITMinefield on Twitter.

Wishing you safe passage through the IT Minefield!

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This topic is discussed in greater detail in Navigating the I.T. Minefield: Straight Talk for the Small Enterprise. To purchase your copy, please visit http://bit.ly/SNL4W.

Leslie Knight is a small business consultant with over 20 years of experience in Information Technology management in Fortune 500 companies.  She applies her experience in Corporate America (saving them millions) to smaller entrepreneurial enterprises. She is also the author of Navigating the I.T. Minefield- Straight Talk for the Small Enterprise.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Business, Information Technology, disaster recovery, small business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.