TWELVE THOUSAND LAPTOPS ARE carelessly lost on a weekly basis in US airports and most companies never even bother to disclose the losses according to a new report.

The study, sponsored by Dell Computer and carried out by the Ponemon Institute surveyed 106 major U.S. airports and 800 business travellers, coming up with some rather disturbing findings.

Only 30 per cent of all lost laptops are ever recovered, and almost half of business travellers admit that their laptops are chock-full of customer data and confidential business information. The report also reckons employees are usually so mortified at losing the company laptop, they don’t even bother reporting it.

Chairman of the Ponemon Institute Larry Ponemon said 600,000 laptops are lost in U.S. airports annually. "IT departments must re-evaluate the steps they’re taking to protect mobile professionals, the laptops they carry, and company data stored on mobile devices."

Apparently 65 per cent of business travelers fess up to not taking the necessary precautions to protect any confidential data they may have on their laptops when travelling, says the study. Some 42 per cent don’t even bother backing up their data before going on a trip, and less than 20 per cent are responsible enough to have whole-disk encryption or file encryption on their laptops.

Of course Dell’s motive for sponsoring the report was to plug its recently launched Dell Prosupport Mobility Services, a suite of asset and data protection services the company claims can help firms protect employee laptops and company information, especially when those computers are lost.

According to the study, the most likely place to lose a laptop is the security checkpoint area. This is unsurprising, considering how difficult it can be to remove your shoes, clutch your little see-through bag of 100ml shampoo containers, empty your pockets of loose change, remove your belt, keep you kickers up and remember your laptop all at the same time. Still, of all the things to leave behind at security, you’d think the mini shampoo bottles would be less of a loss than the company laptop, but never mind.

What happens to the hundreds of thousands of lost laptops? Well, the report reckons that most airports tend to hang on to them for a while before destroying them if no one claims them. We’re fairly sure a fair few of them end up in the homes of airport security workers or on Ebay. Just a hunch.

And if you’re wondering where you’re most likely to lose your laptop, the report says it would be Los Angeles's LAX, which has the absolute worst reputation for laptop losses in the US. But, not to worry, losing a laptop will probably never actually happen to you personally, because according to the study’s weird results, only one per cent of the respondents admitted to personally having lost a laptop, with 84 per cent saying that only someone they knew had been that unlucky. µ

L’Inq
The report (PDF)