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A New York City official reported today that a laptop with the financial information of as many as 280,000 city retirees was stolen from a private consultant when he took the laptop with him to a restaurant. As we have mentioned on this blog numerous times, you should only allow a third party access to your confidential information after they have undergone thorough training to make sure they understand your security policies and procedures. With so many high profile cases of laptops being stolen in the news, thieves are looking for unattended laptops more than ever. Even if the thief doesn’t use the information directly, he can sell it to someone who will, or spread the information on the internet for anyone to use.

Although you need to be careful anytime you allow a consultant to handle your confidential information, you have to be even more cautious when you allow sensitive data to leave your premises on a laptop. The lost laptop itself may be only worth $2000 - $3000 dollars, but according to the numbers from the 2002 Computer Security Institute/FBI Computer Crime & Security Survey, the actual financial loss of a laptop theft is estimated to be $89,000. Although this number is shocking at first, consider the manpower involved in just contacting the 280,000 people, explaining exactly what was stolen, and advising them the best way to secure their finances. It wouldn’t be surprising if the loss of this particular laptop costs New York City millions of dollars.

The most obvious precaution to take with laptops that leave the premises is to make sure the user never leaves them unattended; however, the users are human and can make mistakes. The only way to be sure your information isn’t stolen is to encrypt all the data on the hard drive. Some hard drive manufacturers such as Seagate have started manufacturing laptop hard drives that automatically encrypt all the data on the drive. If your laptop doesn’t already have that functionality, there are numerous software applications you can use to keep your data encrypted. Good hard drive encryption can render a laptop almost useless to a thief, which can save your company hundreds of thousands of dollars in the event of a laptop being stolen.