Business tightens up on laptop security

Poll: But still not tight enough

Published: 10 February 2009 12:38 GMT by Steve Ranger

Tags: laptop

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Companies are getting better at protecting sensitive data held on laptops - but there is still a long way to go before corporate data is tightly secured, according to the latest silicon.com reader poll.

When asked about the security measures used by their company to protect laptop computers, quarter of readers said their organisations employ both encryption and physical locks.

But approximately a third (31 per cent) said their organisation only employed encryption, while physical locks were the sole protection used by 14 per cent of respondents.

And nearly a third (29 per cent) use neither locks nor encryption, despite a number of recent high-profile cases where sensitive data has been lost when laptops have gone missing.

Still the latest poll figures reflect a marked improvement since the last time silicon.com asked this question, in May 2007.

Then, only 19 per cent of respondents said their organisation used encryption and physical locks.

In that poll 19 per cent invested in encryption alone and 16 per cent relied on locks, while nearly half - 47 per cent - had neither locks nor encryption in place.

Encryption is an increasingly hot technology in the public sector as it has experienced a number of data breaches recently.