Mobile security is a hot issue, but who is listening? Who really cares? The mere word of security sends most people running. Investing in preventative IT security has never been a very popular topic. Most board directors clam-up and switch off at the words “Your Company could be at risk if you don’t invest in XYZ technology”. It’s a hard sell for IT managers and it often takes a competitor or themselves to become a victim of crime before they sit up and listen. Users too are very lazy and complacent when it comes to IT security – they don’t value the information they carry around with them and most are just too busy to worry about anything further to complicate their lives. This was made very clear in the Mobile Usage Survey conducted by Infosecurity and Pointsec which found that a third of users don’t both protecting their mobile device with password even though they store highly confidential company and personal information on them including all their other passwords, Pin numbers and bank details.

Surprised by these figures? I doubt it! If you’re an IT manager you’d have been there. In-fact you’re users have probably lost more laptops than you can remember? Surveys show that any large organisation lose between 3-5% of their laptops every year. Relaying laptop theft stories in the local pub is almost as common-place as people boasting how much their houses have shot-up in price over the last two years. However, with an increasingly mobile workforce, often using privately bought mobile devices, the board and IT departments have to take greater notice of who is carrying what around with them and take a rain check of the damage that could be caused if this information was lost and broadcast to the outside world. It is often fine when company information just resides on PCs and servers in an office as the IT departments have far greater control over the information and what is being sent out. Now the same information is being carried out of the office, left in bars or restaurants, at the back of taxis or trains and most commonly forgotten in airports, the IT manager has a nightmare job on his/her hands.


Insuring against hardware theft is rapidly becoming pointless and expensive and few companies bother to take out policies because the premiums are now so high. Plus, companies are now realising that the true cost of a stolen item of hardware is not the device itself, but the information it contains. No company are without laptops, PDAs or smart phones these days, so if you want to make sure your company does not become another statistic or victim of data theft here are a few golden rules you may want to follow.