Video Transcript:
What would happen if you or one of your employees lost their laptop or had it stolen?
For many companies and their employees, this would be a “stop work” emergency situation.
And possibly worse, a costly mistake.
A lost laptop and the associated data loss can cost a company anywhere between $50,000 in missing intellectual property and other sensitive data from just one laptop, or up to 425 million in settlements for a major data breach.
While these are the extreme examples of the potential financial loss, let’s focus on why lost laptops are a data security risk worth taking seriously.
Imagine you have an employee traveling from Scottsdale, Arizona for work. They are concerned about reliable Internet while on the plane. Knowing they have an important report to complete by the end of the day, they do what many people do – move files from a secure cloud to their desktop to work while in transit.
Or let’s say an employee leaves their laptop sitting on the seat of a plane while deplaning and can’t go back onto the plane to retrieve it.
Lastly, another common situation in today’s remote and hybrid work cultures is when an employee works from a coffee shop and leaves for a moment to grab their coffee order ready at the counter only to come back to find their laptop was stolen, possibly by a shoulder surfer who just minutes earlier saw them type their password into the computer.
These common situations happen all the time and create both security, productivity, and data risks.
But they don’t have to. There are simple, economical solutions that are accessible and affordable to small and mid-sized businesses that help protect sensitive company data in the event of a lost or stolen employee laptop.
It all starts with your company’s configuration of Microsoft 365.
The first line of defense is to make sure Bit Locker for Windows for full disk encryption is in place.
Next up makes sure that all devices’ data is set to be wiped after a theft or loss as soon as it’s powered on and online. Unfortunately, data thieves are now savvier than ever, and most will power up the computer and keep it offline while they try to extract the data from it.
This is where strong passwords and multi-factor authentication come into play as an added layer of defense on top of disk encryption.
Also, make sure screens are set to lock and that sessions timeout after 5 minutes. You also want to train your employees to lock their laptops when they leave them unattended even if just for a few minutes.
Lastly, configuring One Drive to automatically upload data to the cloud for protection is critical.
These powerful combination of data security strategies will mitigate the possibility of a data breach if an employee’s laptop is lost or stolen. This will reduce the risk of a lost device to the cost of a replacement versus the situation becoming a costly data breach situation.
Yet, most small to mid-sized companies don’t have these simple solutions that could save them a lot time, money and headaches in place.
MyTek is an Arizona-based business that helps protect proprietary data for Arizona’s small to mid-sized businesses.
Contact us today to learn about simple, affordable security solutions for your business.