Your Laptop Could Be Worth Millions

The next time you’re downtown walking to lunch, laptop in hand, stop. Think for a second. Is your laptop really in your bag? Could someone steal it while you’re getting that chicken salad sandwich? If someone stole it what’s to keep them from accessing all your emails and passwords?

CNET News.com: “A report released Friday by security-software company Symantec suggests that an ordinary notebook holds content valued at 550,000 pounds ($972,000), and that some could store as much as 5 million pounds–or $8.8 million–in commercially sensitive data and intellectual property.

The same research, commissioned by Symantec, shows that only 42 percent of companies automatically back up employees’ e-mails, where much of this critical data is stored, and 45 percent leave it to the individual to do so.

“It’s alarming that executives have mobile devices containing data of such financial value and that very little is being done to protect the information on them,” said Lindsey Armstrong, a vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Symantec.

The threat of stolen laptops is a real concern. About 50 percent of respondents to an FBI computer crime survey said their organization had suffered theft of a notebook or other mobile gear in 2005.”

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