10 Things to Do When you Lose your Laptop
I recently went through an unhappy experience of losing a laptop. There is a lot of personal and company data on the laptop and and going through the exercise of trying to determine all the information risk comes the realization of how lax I’ve been in mixing personal and professional information on my different desktops and laptops. I was lucky in that the laptop I lost was brand new so there was very little on it and had nothing sensitive on it other then my own work and personal info. Here is a list of 10 things that must be done when something like this happens.
1.) Change your network usersname and passwords. The account you use to login to your office network needs to be changed first. I lost a Mac so I did not have an A/D account on the systems but I did have VPN and Email connections to the office.
2.) Contact the IT department about the loss. They can think of areas of concern that you may have forgotten and look for repeated authorization failures in your username.
3.) Change all your personal account information. Email, credit cards, bank accounts, web sites, airlines, anything web based where a username and password is used. Access to these accounts maybe available through web browser cache and cookies, changing the password should prevent this type of access.
4.) Monitor bank and credit card statements for unknown transactions. If a thief is able to steal your identity the first sign will be activity on bank or credit accounts.
5.) If the laptop was stolen you want to request a police report. This may have to be requested in writing or through fax but can take a couple days. The police report is handy to have especially when working with the insurance agency so you have the details of the crime.
6.) Contact your insurance agent. Make sure to read your policy! The claims adjusters can make mistakes so make sure to read through your policy. The adjuster will have a copy of your policy as well and you can step through it together on the phone if there are any questions on item payouts.
7.) Locate the receipt for the laptop. If you have insurance on the laptop or home owners insurance you will likely need to send a receipt to the insurance company.
8.) Search your Email for sensitive data that may have been stolen. I recommend to everyone using Exchange Email server to archive off Email older then a year on a desktop (less portable, less likely to be lost or stolen). This way if a laptop does get lost there is only a year’s worth of Email accessible on it (I keep all my emails).
9.) Check eBay and Craigslist for your laptop. It’s a long shot but it happens all the time where a stolen laptop ends up online for sale. It’s worth it to do a search on used laptops with similar properties. Sites like eBary show the location of the seller so you can search in the area you lost the machine in. Who knows maybe you’ll get lucky.
10.) Start preparing for recovery. Get copies of backup data, software installation disks and license keys. Burn as much as possible to a DVD disk to make it quick and easy to rebuild and restore your laptop once its replaced.
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