As the workforce becomes mobilized, more and more companies are ditching traditional desktop workstations in favor of laptops and tablets. With increased portability comes an increased risk of having a device stolen. Without the right security methods in place, a laptop can easily be hacked into to retrieve business data such as financials, employee information, and the contact information of a company’s clients and vendors.
So if a computer can be removed from the office, then there need to be specific security protocols to ensure that the data on the laptop remains within the company. One way to enhance the security of a laptop is through encryption.
Here are a few reasons as to why you need to encrypt your employees’ laptops:
Your Computer Password Is Not Enough
Having a strong password won’t do anything to protect your data (and the data of your company) if your laptop falls into someone else’s hands. One way way to bypass the password protection on the computer is to boot to a new operating system via a USB flash drive, which bypasses the password protection, and allows a user to access the files. A more simplistic but time consuming method is to remove the hard drive with a screwdriver, and then placing in an inexpensive USB hard drive enclosure to boot as a secondary drive on another computer. Regardless of what method used for cracking, a physical laptop is at risk if it isn’t encrypted.
Encryption is Important for BYOD
If your company allows you to bring in your own devices, including laptops, to use for business purposes – you need to make sure that your laptop is encrypted. Why? Often if an employee is working on a laptop that is part of a BYOD plan, chances are he or she is going to be moving the computer back and forth between the office and home. If for some reason the laptop goes missing (i.e. is either left behind on a train or bus) or is stolen, then all business related information stored on said employees laptop is vulnerable to theft. Full disk encryption protects the entire device, and can keep sensitive company information out of the wrong hands. Even if the device isn’t recovered, the company can relax knowing that the data is safe thanks to the disk encryption.
You Can Elect to Only Encrypt Files
If a laptop is used mostly for business purposes, then it should have a full disk encrypting to protect all of the data on the device. However, say an employee has a laptop computer that he or she uses at home. On occasion that laptop is used to conduct business specific actions. If the employee doesn’t want to encrypt the entire device, he or she can use file encryption methods to make sure that any work related documents, spreadsheets, and database files are encrypted – without having to lock down the entire system.
Want to learn more about laptop encryption or have questions about securing your company’s mobile devices? Contact Roan Solutions today.
