The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 20

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TECHNOLOGY
FRANKLY SPEAKING

How to Find your Lost
Laptop and Protect Its Data
By Jeffrey A. Franklin, Esquire

Practical digital security tips to
help you protect the data on and
locate your lost or stolen laptop.
Stolen Laptops: A Common Occurrence
A laptop is stolen every 50 seconds in the United States.1
Verizon found in its 2016 Data Breach Investigations Report
(2016 Report) that misplaced IT assets like laptops accounted
for up to 45 percent of the sector's breaches.
Employees everywhere make mistakes. In the 2016 Report,
an asset is lost over 100 times more frequently than it is stolen.
Of stolen devices, laptops were the most common target of
thieves. Physical theft occurs most often in the victim's own
work area (39%) or from the employee's personal vehicle (33%).
Far more often the laptop is lost rather than stolen, but the
impact is the same - the laptop is gone and likely not turned
into Lost and Found.
For non-encrypted devices, the determination of a breach
can be tough, given that you no longer have custody of the
computer. Is the data on that laptop at risk? Certainly, since
often the sole control, a password, can be bypassed. But, that
does not meet the definition for many of a confirmed data
breach. Thus, there is much more data in the "at-risk category"
than the "confirmed breach category."
Things can and do happen, which is why we need to make
the effort to protect the data on our laptops (and tablets and
phones, but that is a future article).
1

http://www.lojack.com/Laptops

20 | Berks Barrister

How to protect your laptop in case it is lost
or stolen:
Some basic defensive measures go a long way towards
protecting your computer in the event that it's lost or stolen.
For example, you should protect your computer's user and
administrative accounts with strong passwords.

In case an attacker brute forces or succeeds in guessing or
bypassing your password, you should consider disabling your
apps from auto-logging in upon boot-up. That step will help
deter attackers from automatically accessing some of your other
accounts, but, it inconveniences users.
In the meantime, fight against data breaches of stolen
laptops by making sure you encrypt the hard drives of all business
laptops and train employees to be careful with the laptops.
In addition, enable device tracking and remote wiping
software to help recover a laptop if it goes missing. Of course,


http://berksbar.org/ http://www.lojack.com/Laptops

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Berks Barrister Winter 2017

The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 1
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 2
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 3
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 4
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 5
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 6
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 7
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 8
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The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 11
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 12
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 13
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The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 17
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 18
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 19
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 20
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 21
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 22
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 23
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 24
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 25
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 26
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 27
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 28
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 29
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 30
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 31
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 32
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 33
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 34
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 35
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 36
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 37
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 38
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 39
The Berks Barrister Winter 2017 - 40
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BerksBarrister/BerksBarrister_Springr2020
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BerksBarrister/BerksBarrister_Fall-Winter2019
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BerksBarrister/Berksbarrister_Summer2019
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BerksBarrister/BerksBarrister_Springr2019
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BerksBarrister/Berksbarrister_Winter2019
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BerksBarrister/Berksbarrister_Summer2018
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BerksBarrister/berksbarrister_winter2017
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com