One in four business professionals leave their laptop unattended while travelling 
(21/09/2009)
In an Absolute Software survey of business professionals, 41 per cent of respondents confirmed that they take their business laptop out of the office on a daily basis. A further 42 per cent leave work with their laptop at least once a week.
Though the vast majority of respondents (83 per cent) sensibly helped protect confidential data by remembering their laptop passwords, a worrying 24 per cent admitted to having left their laptop unattended while travelling.
Another threat to data security highlighted by the survey was the fact that 24 per cent of respondents had left their laptop in the care of strangers while in transit.
A significant 12 per cent of professionals polled had suffered the stress and anxiety of having lost their laptop while on the move. A further one per cent shame-facedly confessed to having mislaid a company laptop ‘a few times’ – costing the business time and money to replace the hardware, not to mention the potentially greater expense of a data breach.
“These results prove that the work/life divide is blurring, but IT security is failing to recognise this,” said Stephen Midgley, Vice President at Absolute Software. “When asked the question ‘Do you take more care of your business laptop than your personal laptop?’, a staggering 49 per cent of respondents said they treated them the same, despite the qualitative difference between personal and commercial data.”
Midgley continued: “With laptops continuing to increase in popularity among business executives AND criminals alike, the survey shows that though human carelessness can be reduced, errors will and do occur, making some form of additional remote security essential.”
Related topics: Data management and data security Encryption Mobile and Wireless Security
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