Sensitive documents detailing your company’s business plans including your product strategy, acquisition prospects, product roadmap, and customer records including personally identifiable information can often be found on employee laptops.  Now imagine some of those laptops stolen. The thought of this happening strikes fear in the hearts and minds of executives ranging from small to large organizations that are striving to safeguard customer data and stay a step ahead of the competition. But the threat is real and
organizations are responsible for their data. This is not a joke.

Last month, almost 1300 people had to cope with the fact that their private information had been compromised.  Why? A faculty member’s laptop had been stolen while traveling overseas.

In Chicago, thousands of patient names, addresses, and social security numbers were on a laptop that was stolen from an employee who works at a company responsible for billing ambulance charges.

97,000 Starbucks employees were notified that in October, 2008 their information may have been compromised.  The result is a class action lawsuit against the company.

Finally, in 2006, a laptop containing the information of 26.5 million veterans was stolen from an employee of the Veteran Affairs Department of the United States.  The department agreed to pay $20 million to veterans as a result of a class action lawsuit brought against them.

These are just a few examples of laptop theft that are occurring around the world. Customers and patients are clearly expressing that they will not tolerate the loss of their sensitive information.  Some of the latest incidents are highlighting pending litigation due to laptop theft. The problem has become so great, that governments around the world are introducing privacy laws to enforce better information handling.

The risk to a company’s reputation, brand, and pocketbook must be compared to the cost of investing in a hard disk encryption solutions.  Hard disk encryption solutions such as AlertSec can provide the needed piece of mind that sensitive customer and business data is safe, even if a laptop is stolen.  Executives must act now before their company name ends up on one of these headlines.

• Previous Entry: Laptops Loaded with Private Data
• Next Entry: Security does not stop at the Firewall