The Costs of Laptop Theft and Loss

Have you calculated the costs you would incur if just one of your laptops were lost or stolen?

Hardware Costs

If you purchase laptop computers, you know that now is a good time to buy. Prices are low, and you can purchase a standard business laptop for around $1,200. Replacement is more affordable than ever—IF you only have hardware to protect....

Productivity Costs

Any business with people on the go—sales force, field agents, service teams—depends on laptop computing. Laptops mobilize productivity. Losing a laptop crushes productivity. Mobile employees lose their ability to work effectively, IT personnel spend time replacing and reconfiguring equipment, and customers wait for you to get back up to speed. But these are still just lightweight costs.

Data Costs

The real value of your laptop computers is in the data. According to the Ponemon Institute's 2009 study, "The Cost of a Lost Laptop," the average cost of losing a laptop is $49,246. Data represents 80% of this cost.

If the value of your corporate data or your clients' data is higher than average, your costs may be more in line with estimates from other studies. The 2002 Computer Security Institute/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey estimated the financial loss of a stolen laptop to be $89,000. The following year, this number increased to $250,000.

The damage is in the data. Depending on your business, the cost of lost data can be 40 to 200 times greater than hardware costs.

Reactive Costs

The high value of laptop data, especially confidential or sensitive client data, translates directly into hard-dollar reactive costs.

You may remember the theft of a single Veterans Administration laptop containing the data of 26.5 million vets. Notification letters alone cost nearly $8 million. Add in the cost of credit monitoring services offered by VA and untold other costs, and the VA case may have reached billions of dollars in overall damage—from a single laptop theft.

Security Costs Less

In April 2009, a laptop belonging to the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (DHS), containing private information of 1 million citizens, was stolen from an employee's car. Within a month, DHS had spent over $150,000 on notification letters to half the people exposed. For the same amount of money, DHS could easily have protected more than a thousand laptops for their entire lifespan.

A pound of cure buys a ton of protection.

Protect Your Laptops, Protect Your Wallet

If you can't afford a lost or stolen laptop, we encourage you to learn about MyLaptopGPS. Prevent theft. Recover assets. Destroy compromised files—remotely and covertly.