Data on mobile devices, such as laptops, form today a major security threat. Companies and institutes holding customer data on their mobile devices face a significant risk if the data is not secured. A security breach survey made in 2006 shows how laptops were notoriously visible in the records. In one case more than 26 million personal information records were compromised when a laptop and disks were stolen from employees homes. Moreover, the breaches involving laptops included sectors regarded as fortresses of information security such as patient records.
An article in Slashdot proposed Full Disk Encryption (FDE) as a possible solution. When FDE is used all data on the device’s hard disk, including main memory’s swapping area, is encrypted. This causes decrease on the system performance. Moreover, with FDE if the encryption key is lost or password is forgot, the owner of the data looses access to the original information. An alternative solution would be to store the confidential data only on a storage service maintained or acquired by the company. By organizing possibility to securely handle the data over a secured network such as VPN the data never has to leave the secure perimeter.
Read the original Slashdot article .
CNN report also how an international company lost nearly 60 000 employee records due to missing laptops.
this is a nice article, I can recommend looking the original article for link to the detailed security matrix, relevant stuff for professionals taking care of data security