A laptop can be lost at the airport, stolen from a parked car, or taken while the user is away from his/her desk. Even desktop computers are susceptible to theft. Although hardware can be easily replaced, the loss of customer privacy and exposure of proprietary information is not as easily repaired. In fact, the hardware replacement value of a lost or stolen computer is dwarfed by the resulting expenses and lost revenue an organization may experience due to the breach.
The consequences of losing confidential, customer data are significant both in terms of dollars lost and the ability to run your business include:
1. Lost business – Following a security breach, businesses experience higher rates of customer turnover and lower new customer acquisition.
2. Notification – Businesses contacted affected customers (in many cases, required by law) to notify them of the breach.
3. Detection & escalation – The identification, investigation, and auditing of a breach are some of the first steps organizations take immediately after a breach.
4. Legal – A variety of interested or affected parties including government prosecutors or agencies, shareholders, and affected individuals may seek criminal or civil action in the courts.
5. Regulatory – An organization may be compelled by law or corporate governance to take actions, including remediation, paying fines, or discontinuing services.
6. Remediation – An organization may be compelled to or voluntarily take corrective actions, including fixing the breach vulnerability, notifying and supporting affected individuals or organizations, and mounting a public relations campaign.
7. Brand equity – Other consequences may have long-term implications on brand equity. Brand damage may subsequently lead to a reduction in pricing power, diminished marketing effectiveness, and other competitive disadvantages, for example.
Organizations considering hard drive encryption should evaluate solutions based on four requirements:
1. End-user productivity – The solution should remain transparent at all times and not interfere with end-user productivity.
2. Enhanced data security – Beyond full disk encryption, the solution should provide options for protecting and controlling USB flash drives by policies as wells as files stored on shared systems and files and directory archives shared with
3. Centralized management – The solution should allow for central management that enables administrators and help desk staff to easily support remote users.
4. Business continuity – Encrypted data needs be accessible (according to policy) not only today, but for years to come
Identify Easiest Hard Disk Encryption Options
While there are a number of product options, there are one or two that are most likely to be right for you. The products in this category cover a wide range of prices and features — all are standalone software packages — independent from the underlying operating system (OS). SC magazine, just completed an excellent
overview of Hard Drive Encryption, including product reviews. In this article they identify
PGP Whole Disk Encryption as “Best Buy” and “Easiest to Install.”
Understand the Risk to Your Business
Each industry and business is subject to different risks. The excellent Ponemon study “2006 Annual Study: Cost of a Data Breach” inidicates that the cost per lost record can vary from $50-2500.
There’s a brand new tool about to hit the software industry –
ABarcode is an ActiveX control that allows you to print barcodes in any Windows application that supports ActiveX technology, including the MS Office suite (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, FrontPage) and development environments like Visual Studio.
