How much does a lost Laptop cost?

I stumbled upon this study today commissioned by Intel and executed by Ponemon. They key findings were:

The average value of a lost laptop is $49,246. This value is based on seven cost components: replacement cost, detection, forensics, data breach, lost intellectual property costs, lost productivity and legal, consulting and regulatory expenses.
What makes a lost laptop costly to a company is the potential for a data breach to occur. In the cases we studied, the occurrence of a data breach represents 80% of the cost.
The second highest cost component is attributed to intellectual property loss. When the cost of a data breach is removed, intellectual property loss represents 59% of the total cost.
The faster the company learns that a laptop is lost, the lower the average cost. If a company discovers the loss in the same day, the average cost is $8,950. If it takes more than one week, the average cost rises significantly to approximately $115,849.
Lost productivity is not a significant cost to companies. When employees have down time due to losing their laptops, it represents only 1% of the total cost.
While lost laptop costs appear to be correlated to position in an organization, the most senior level respondents do not experience the highest average cost. The average cost of a lost laptop for a senior executive is $28,449 and the highest average costs are for manager and director, $60,781 and $61,040 respectively.

So, protecting the information on your Laptop is fundamental and could significantly reduce the cost of a stolen Laptop – say: Switch on Bitlocker…

Roger

Comments

Anonymous
April 27, 2009
and the best way to prevent that is by having a backup of the laptop, and having several protections, maybe a harddrive password.