Photo Credit: Daniel Zivkovic
The United States remains the No.1 location for stolen laptops worldwide, followed by the UK and Denmark.
Fewer than 10% of thefts actually occur from the office. However, most of the laptops stolen were not necessarily company assets. As more work places are becoming mobile, work laptops are increasingly being kept at home or on the go, and personal laptops are being brought into the workplace.
The most common areas for theft within the EMEA were from residences (14%) and cars (11%).
Summer time was revealed to be the peak period for corporate laptop theft, when employees are usually on holiday and laptops were left unsecured in their homes.
"The cost to business of purchasing new equipment without knowing where existing assets are, as well as the potential fines for data breaches can be very expensive," said Stephen Midgley, Global VP at Absolute Software.
"Regulations dictate a timescale from a breach to when customers must be notified of data loss. If companies aren’t aware of a lost laptop for days or weeks; compliance with regulation becomes a real challenge and limiting damage to a company’s brand and reputation is almost impossible."
A high percentage of theft also took place in locations such as Airport luggage and storage areas (29%), the boarding area (22%) and in the security zone (12%), where most travellers might least suspect their laptops would be stolen.
Over 40% of respondents said they didn’t know when or where their laptops were stolen.
"Laptops contain an incredible amount of sensitive data, from company passwords stored as cookies to customer details auto-saved in spreadsheets," said Midgley.
"We’ve found that identity theft is one of the top related crimes for laptop theft. Speed is of the essence when it comes to a security breach – a lag in reporting theft could make the difference between successfully wiping data and encryption being cracked and crucial data stolen."
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