Business Practices

Seven in 10 government mobile devices are unencrypted.
Government Accountability Office (GAO), IT Security: Federal Agency efforts to encrypt sensitive information are under way, but work remains, June 2008

53% of mobile professionals carry confidential company information on their notebook PCs and, of those, 65% don’t take steps to protect the data.
Dell & Ponemon Institute, Airport Insecurity: the case of lost laptops, June 30, 2008

66% of US employees write down passwords in unsafe places.
IT Facts, 66% of US employees write down passwords in unsafe places, March 21, 2008

34% of the businesses have no tools/procedures in place to detect identity fraud.
Ad-hoc News, Business Owners Have “False Sense of Security’’ When It Comes to Data Breaches, May 27, 2008

85% of privacy and security professionals had at least one reportable breach in the past 12 months.
Deloitte, Enterprise @ Risk: 2007 Privacy & Protection Survey, 2007

63% of privacy and security professionals experienced multiple reportable data breaches – between 6 and 20 breaches – in 2007.
Deloitte, Enterprise @ Risk: 2007 Privacy & Protection Survey, 2007

Data Loss & Costs

66% of breaches involved data the company did not know was on their system.
Verizon, 2008 Data Breach Investigations Report, 2008

The cost of recovering from a single data breach now averages $6.3M - that’s up 31 percent since 2006 and nearly 90 percent since 2005.
Ponemon Institute, U.S. Costs of a Data Breach, November 2007

Computer & Handset Loss & Theft

Laptop theft accounted for 50% of reported security attacks.
CSI, The 12th Annual Computer Crime and Security Survey, 2007

Lost or stolen laptops and mobile devices are the most frequent cause of a data breach, accounting for 49% of data breaches in 2007.
Ponemon Institute, U.S. Costs of a Data Breach, November 2007

12,000 laptops are lost in U.S. airports each week, and two-thirds are never returned.
Dell & Ponemon Institute, Airport Insecurity: the case of lost laptops, June 30, 2008

Recovery Stats

Fastest recovery by Absolute was 47 minutes.
Absolute Software, 2008

Absolute recovers 3 out of 4 missing computers.*
Absolute Software, 2008

Internal Theft

62% of breaches were attributed to significant internal errors.
Verizon, 2008 Data Breach Investigations Report, 2008

The majority of data breaches (61%) originate from internal sources, as a result of enterprises’ inability to enforce their IT policies or due to problems with the policies themselves.
Data Monitor, Mitigating the Risks of Data Loss, August 2007