The Twin Cities Pioneer Press had an interesting story about the rise in laptop thefts. The thieves are apparently targetting rental cars by upscale and trendy restaurants, knowing the probability that executives theft their laptops in the car while they dine.
Since January 2005… "Palo Alto police have fielded 65 reports of stolen laptops."
WOW! 65 in one city alone…makes you wonder how many are stolen throughout the U.S. and in cities throughout the world…gotta see if there is a way to find this information…
It also referenced the laptop containing HP employee data that was stolen from Fidelity (discussed on this blog on March 23); "The HP employee data was imported onto the laptop for the software demonstration."
Okay…another information security snafu; using live production data for test and demo purposes. Yes, I know most companies still use production data for testing and demo purposes. However, there are a growing number of products that can be used to scrub or de-identify data…yes, it takes a bit more time to do than just using live data…but using dummy data for situations such as this is a safeguard that will help keep incidents like this from being even worse than the loss of the hardware. Plus, it is against the law in some countries to use production data in this manner.
Does your organization have strong mobile computing device security measures in place…and effective training and awareness for the people using them? Do you have procedures in place for using dummy data for demo and test purposes?
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