Missing a Laptop? Join the Billion-Dollar Club

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A new survey shows that U.S. businesses and other organizations are losing billions of dollars due to lost and stolen laptop computers. Yet, two-thirds do not take advantage of even basic security practices, such as encryption, back-up and anti-theft technologies. "The Billion Dollar Lost-Laptop Study," conducted by Intel Corporation and the Ponemon Institute, analyzed the scope and circumstances of missing laptop PCs. The survey found that the 329 organizations polled had collectively lost more than 86,000 laptops worth a staggering $2.1 billion.
 
So, those 86,000 laptops lost each had a value of apprx $24,000? Help me out here.
 
what's even worse about this is that many corporate laptop users don't even take basic security into account. My last company had an executive VP leave his laptop in his car, out in the open in the back seat, while he went to dinner after work. This is just inviting someone to steal it, and they did. (Not only that, but leaving a laptop in a car in a freezing February evening is really bad for the battery.) They estimated the lost data was worth about half a million dollars.

They managed to track down the guy who stole it 6 months later when the buyer from eBay requested service from HP for a dead battery. The guy who stole it was just after some extra cash for his drug habit. The thief got prosecuted for it, the eBay buyer lost his $350, and we got the laptop back, sans all the user data.

I even had customer service people leave their laptops in their cars overnight on a regular basis. I kept telling them that it was bad for the laptop to be out in the heat and cold, and that it could be very easily stolen, but they still did it. Far, far too many corporate laptop users are just not careful enough with their laptops. the technology doesn't matter when the users won't use some common sense.
 
There are many ways to lose a Laptop. Putting yourself at higher risk is just feeding the thieves ability to find you.
 
The large firm I used to work for used to issue all contractors with a new Dell Latitude or Thinkpad to allow them to work on the corporate network.

The contractor would work for a few months, deliver what it was they were working on then leave.

Only 99% of the time they never handed back the laptops or the data.

No one seemed to care. Except the actual non contract staff that were struggling along with 256MB P4 machines that just wanted to die and were always being told there was no budget for new kit.
 
It drives me crazy with laptops, people don't like the idea of spending 50-80 bucks on a backup drive >_< I'm just glad that most of the time the drives don't fail all the way and you can still recover some data.
 
Of course I understand that most of the impact from losing laptops is from the loss of data; that part is not lost on me. I guess it was just the way in which that sentence was written, as if the total value of the hardware was $2.1 kajillion.

Another thing (and I'm assuming I'll get roll-eyes on this too), how exactly can they quantify in dollars the data breach, lost IP, lost productivity, etc.? To me it makes the $ value seem arbitrary, but I'm probably too picky.
 
More reason to uy a desktop. Apart from the being 9000 times moar powaful. Like to see someone steal my 45kg desktop in a smash and grab.
 
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