A government laptop containing personal information was stolen in North Carolina. The laptop contained personal information of people receiving services from the North Carolina Division of Aging and  Adult Services. Here’s the story.

While the data on the laptop was password protected, there is no guarantee that the personal information stored on the computer can’t be accessed. Now, there’s hassle and expense all around:

• North Carolina must contact all of the potentially affected people
• These people are asked to place a fraud alert on their credit report and to regularly monitor their credit report
• Additional people were notified to be alert (presumably, contact information was on this laptop but not social security numbers)
• The end user needs a new laptop and hopes their data is backed up (not just the consumer data but anything they’ve had on the laptop)

As you can see, this is a real problem for many people and, rightfully, there is real concern. In a situation like this, you hope it’s just the hardware that will be used by the laptop thief and not the data on it.

This scenario is one we are solving with NxTop. We realize that laptops will be stolen and that dealing with the follow-up in any situation is a pain. In most cases, it is the data on the stolen laptop that causes problems and not the hardware itself.

The solution we’ve come up with combines use of disk encryption and data leakage protection with the ability to remotely “kill” the PC from NxTop Center with a few mouse clicks.  Plus, all of the user’s data, applications, and settings are seamlessly backed up on the central server.  Simply register a new PC with NxTop Center—even a completely different laptop from a different vendor—and within minutes the user is restored to their personalized environment.  I don’t mean a base Windows image with collection of files from a backup server.  This is their desktop environment, right down to the settings and the wallpaper picture of their cat.

For more information, see this post: How Do You Deal With A Stolen Laptop? and this web page: Laptop Management and Mobile User Management

The Daily Incite says it best: “No one cares about encryption” – not exactly, people care (and The Daily Incite does mention this). They care a lot. Encryption is a must have. It’s just that people don’t care about the details behind the encryption.

Encryption has evolved from a product to a feature and should be included in a wide variety of products. It’s not something that should be sold separately, or something that should be purchased from a third-party, or something that is optional. It’s important and it should be expected that vendors will work out the details and by the time the product makes it to you, it must work and be seamless. Except in very few instances, people don’t want to select encryption, they don’t want to know what the encryption is, they just want it included. It’s a must have but not a decision factor.

Mobile computing exacerbates the need for encryption. How often do you hear about stolen or lost laptops? What about data leakage? Encryption is a must for mobile devices – it’s not an add-on.

NxTop is built with integrated and full disk encryption to ensure total protection of your data, which is very important for managing laptops and other PCs. Our engineers (and myself) spent a lot of time to determine the right encryption for NxTop (secure, transparent, easy to manage, doesn’t add a lot of bulk, etc.) so that when you test and deploy NxTop (and you will :-), you can be sure encryption is in place without any worries.