Losing your laptop computer is the most common cause of data breaches for Australian organisations claims an online survey of business decision-makers. JOHN HARRIS reports

Holding on to your laptop in an airport is even trickier than keeping track of a toddler in a theme park.

I speak from experience having lost both my Toshiba notebook at Sydney Airport and my then two-year-old daughter beside the crocodile enclosure at Queensland’s Australia Zoo.

Fortunately, thanks to the kindness of strangers, both were returned to me in a relatively short time – although, with my daughter, that 10 minutes seemed like an eternity.

While I’ve still to find statistics on negligent parents, I’ve come across a report from Symantec that suggests losing laptops – in airports and elsewhere – is quite common.

Lost laptop computers were cited as a primary cause of data breaches by 45 per cent of respondents to Symantec’s Australian Data Loss Prevention Survey. Symantec is a Silicon Valley company that develops and sells security, storage and systems management solutions.

Released late last year, the report is based on an online survey completed by 156 qualified Australian respondents. After lost laptops, it listed the most common causes of data breaches as accidental human error (42 per cent); lost mobile phones or portable devices (30 per cent); hacked systems (29 per cent); actions by malicious insiders (28 per cent); paper records leaving an organisation (26 per cent); and malicious code infiltrating systems (24 per cent).

The report states that four in five responding organisations had experienced some form of data breach. Two in five reported they had from six to 20 data breaches in the past five years.

The report noted the average financial cost of a single data breach varied greatly: Seven per cent of respondents estimated its cost more than $1 million while 34 per cent reported spending less than $5000 on a data breach.

So, apart from handcuffing your computer case to your wrist, what can you to do prevent laptop loss and other data breaches?

Symantec recommends identifying and classifying risks for all critical information and then developing information protection policies and practices to secure your business secrets.

A key measure is educating employees on the value of your company’s information assets and their role in protecting sensitive data. The report states that, with heightened awareness, employees can become a company’s strongest line of defence and its most valuable security ally.

John Harris is managing director of Impress Media Australia. You can visit his website at www.impress.com.au.

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