5 Tips to Keep Your Laptop Secure

With a shift from in-office to remote work, brought on by the Pandemic in 2020, more and more employees are being provided laptops for work, versus traditional desktop PCs. While the benefits of a laptop may seem obvious, as they provide a mobile work-from-anywhere option, they also carry a much higher risk of being lost or stolen. Below, we outline the Top 5 (and absolute minimum) things you can do to protect your team’s fleet. 

  1. Keep them in the office 

While it may seem counterintuitive to keep a laptop in the office, they are much safer if they never leave the four walls of your building. This is not to say that employees cannot take their laptops home, or on business trips, should they need them to do their work. However, we do encourage you to avoid instances where employees are taking their laptops home nightly for personal use. As the laptop is intended for work, it is well within your rights to say they should only leave the office for work-related activities. 

  1. Locks 

Providing a docking station with a lock, or a locking mobile cart (that can house up to 20 laptops) is a great way to lessen theft, should your office ever be broken into. While locks are not going to stop determined thieves, they will slow them down allowing time for law enforcement to arrive.  

  1. Require Passwords 

Although this may seem like a no-brainer, be sure that each of your employees does not opt out of password protecting their laptop. Some companies go so far as to implement fingerprint scanning devices (that can be added to a laptop via a USB drive), and revolving security codes for their VPNs. When it comes to the security of your company’s information & assets, there is no such thing as too many hoops to jump through! 

  1. Security Software

We are still in an era where hackers exist, unfortunately. Installing security software on all devices will help protect against viruses, spyware and Trojans. While this is something that desktops & laptops alike should carry, security software is arguably more important for laptop computers due to their increased out of network use (when traveling or working from home).  

  1. Storage 

If possible, keep all company documents and information on the corporate server or in a secure location (like Dropbox, which requires a password), rather than in a file folder on your employees computer itself. For example, sending an item as an attachment to an email provides a greater risk than sending a document link to the item’s location on your company server. If you are unable to avoid storing information on a laptop, ensure that all data is backed up to the server regularly, so in the event of a breach or theft, an entire year’s worth of work is not lost. 

While the list above is not exhaustive, by any means, it is a great list of the absolute minimum must-dos to keep your laptop, and company data, secure. As companies grow, we suggest utilizing data encryption, remote locking and wipe software options. The above list is a great place to star for any small business or company transitioning to remote work. If you have any questions about how to ensure your laptop is safe, or with implementing any of the 5 suggestions above, please reach out to our team — we are here to help!