This is the advice that mobile security experts Pointsec Mobile Technologies are offering their corporate clients, based on research that they conducted this year in the “Mobile Usage Survey”. The survey found that 25% of people have already lost a laptop or PDA and this is likely to increase during the Christmas crush with potentially dire consequences such as having your identity stolen, tarnishing your reputation or worse still allowing a hacker to breach your company’s network.
In the build up to Christmas your chances of losing a mobile device are even higher than normal due to overcrowding:
—In the stores where everybody is Christmas shopping and you are laden
down with bags.
—On the trains and buses as more people leave their cars due to limited
parking spaces.
—At the banks and post offices as people need more money as it gets
closer to the end of the year.
—In restaurants, bars and clubs as people celebrate at the Christmas
party.
According to the survey you are most likely to lose your laptop or PDA in the back of a taxi on the way home from the Christmas party or after a big shopping expedition, as this is where a quarter of people report losing their devices. The next most dangerous hot-spot is the venue itself with a fifth reporting that they have lost a device in a bar, restaurant or nightclub. As if waking up after the Christmas party with a severe hang-over, or spending all your hard-earned cash is not bad enough, imagine the feeling when you can’t find your laptop or PDA and realize it’s been lost or stolen along with the entire details of your personal and corporate life. A third of PDA owners commonly download onto their devices, bank account details, pin numbers, credit card information, social security numbers, business and personal names and addresses. Many have this information residing on their PDAs without adequately securing this information with a third not using passwords and 57% not bothering with encryption. By joining in the Christmas festivities this year and not adequately protecting this information you could be in grave danger of becoming another statistic and exposing all your data to a thief, opportunist, hacker or competitor.
Worse still identity theft is now at an all time high and if an unprotected laptop or PDA is stolen and contains all your personal and corporate details it could enable someone to steal your identity. A victim of identity theft will find that it takes them a frustrating 300 hours to put their records straight.
Magnus Ahlberg, Managing Director of Pointsec, says, “We do not want to be kill-joys this Christmas. We simply want people to realize that mobile devices frequently get lost or stolen every day, and most especially as we get caught up in the Christmas rush. Often people do not address this problem until it is too late and they have experienced the disaster of losing valuable information. Therefore, we would suggest that if your mobile device is not adequately protected with passwords or encryption leave them at home or under lock and key.”
One last thought, if partying or shopping without your mobile phone seems almost inconceivable remember to keep it in a safe place or face the consequences as 40% of people have already lost a mobile phone!
