Lost Devices: A Minor Inconvenience or a Complete Disaster?

As you may be fully aware, last week more lockdown restrictions were lifted.

Pubs and restaurants are now allowed to serve outdoors, gyms are open, and there is finally an end to the home-haircuts! Hallelujah!

Whilst it’s great that we’re heading back to normal life in a COVID-safe way, it does mean many of your staff are going to be rushing off to meet friends for food and drink after work.

For those that carry their work devices with them, this is where things can get shaky for a business.

Getting caught up in the freedom, it can be too easy for people to forget their laptop bag or leave their phone on the table.

Thing is – depending on the IT setup of your business, a lost laptop can be either a minor inconvenience or a complete disaster.

3 Questions to Ask:

1. Is it encrypted?

Encrypting your data adds a level of protection to it. IT means that should it be stolen; it is completely useless to anyone else.

Less than 50% of businesses have standardised end-to-end encryption set up. You may have some level of encryption, but do you have a documented standard across every area of your business?

2. Is it password protected?

And when we say password protected, we mean something stronger than ‘password1’.

You need to use words, not word. Use that top row of your keyboard liberally.

Multifactor authentication – this is exactly the reason this is our greatest recommendation. Should anyone happen to guess your 14 character password of %’s, #’s, letters and numbers, this will prevent them from getting into your accounts and also give you a heads-up someone is trying to gain access.

3. Can the data be wiped remotely?

This tactic will allow you to remove and save the data that is on the device, hopefully before it has been compromised.

What Now?

If your answer is “yes” to all three, great! You can relax and go and enjoy and good pub grub yourself. Sure, it’s annoying a device has been lost, but your business’ data is safe.

If you can’t answer positively to all three questions or aren’t 100% certain of the answers… give us a call and we can check for you.

 

It’s very important to keep your business data protected, so if you have any concerns or questions, do not hesitate to get in touch and ask for some advice.

We’re here to help!