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Laptops - Your finest IT asset and worst IT enemy.
There's no doubt that laptops
are of huge value to modern businesses. The ability to take your
work with you when you leave the office has made home working a
reality for even the smallest businesses, has meant your sales
team can take their IT resources with them wherever they go and
has made businesses of all sizes more flexible and client
focused.
With all these benefits it's
no wonder that year on year the growth in laptop sales has far
exceeded the growth of desktop PC sales with total sales of
Laptops expected to outstrip desktops within the next 2 years.
The security issue with
laptops comes about from the very reason for their popularity;
the ability to take your work away from the office. By their
very nature laptops are far more likely to be lost or stolen
than their office based cousins and with the hardware also goes
your confidential data, secure links in to your company network
(such as VPNs) and any expensive software licenses or keys you
may have purchased. Hardware can easily be replaced but a loss
of confidential data can be far more problematic.
Protecting your business
laptops from these risks is not difficult and here are the
Geek-Guru guidelines for laptops security:
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The first step to laptop
security is defining a clear laptop policy as part of your
standard IT policy (you do have an IT policy right?). This
should clearly define what employees are and are not allowed
to do with their laptops and also allows you to disseminate
guidelines for keeping laptops secure.
-
Ensure employees know how
to look after their laptops and where to leave them when
they are away from work (not the back seat of the car for
instance).
-
Install encryption
software. Software can be installed (such as PGP featured
below) that will encrypt the entire contents of a laptop
using military strength encryption. By today's standards
these are completely impenetrable and would mean the data
stored on a laptop is completely safe if the laptop is ever
lost or stolen.
-
Ensure you have an enforced
password policy in place and that users know the importance
of secure passwords. Even if you use encryption software
it's only as secure as the password used to access the data.
-
Upgrade
your laptops to Vista Enterprise or Ultimate. These versions
of Vista come with a full-disk encryption package called bit
locker which protects your data automatically at all times.
By following
these guidelines you can minimise the risks of laptop theft and
ensure that if the worst does occur and a laptop goes walkies it
is nothing more than a financial annoyance.
Feel free to
speak to one of the Geek-Guru engineers about any of these
topics or drop us an e-mail if you require any additional
information.
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