My good friend Alec sent me some great links to statistics about the numbers of laptops lost at airports each year…thanks Alec! 🙂
Here they are…
- Airport Insecurity: The Case of Lost Laptops
- Survey: More than 10,000 laptops lost each week at airports
- Dell Mobility Services Aim To Protect Notebook Data
Holy cow!! Over 630,000 laptops lost…that we are aware of…at airports each year?!
And most often at the security checkpoints…?! Geez, folks, pay attention to your own stuff and quit gawking at the others around you getting frisked!
Alec also made a very good point, “At $2K per laptop, losing 630,000 machines is $1.2B in hardware loss. Since the worth of the data on lost/stolen laptops is much greater than the machines, can you imagaine how much the lost information is worth?!”
Indeed!!
I know many organizations typically value laptops and other mobile computing devices solely according to the hardware and software values. Organizations must start tracking the data on those mobile computers, and include consideration for the value of the information.
You can use a scaled-down version of my privacy breach impact calculator to see what a breach involving personally identifiable information (PII) could cost your organization. It will help to show the value of that PII if it is lost or breached.
I created the calculator around 6 or so years ago, based upon my own experiences and research, but I have seen that it is still very helpful to demonstrate to CxOs the potential negative financial impact a privacy breach could have upon their organization. I have the full version, with 15 additional variables (for around a total of 45 different variables), within my Privacy Management Toolkit.
Tags: awareness and training, Information Security, IT compliance, lost laptops, policies and procedures, privacy impact calculator, privacy training, risk management, security training, stolen laptops