44 www.csoonline.com July 2004

DANIEL ROBINSON LOOKED like just another jobcandidate. With his dark gray suit, wingtips, no-nonsensered tie and neatly trimmed hair, he was so utterly unre-markable that, when he asked the receptionist if he mightslip into a restricted area of the building to usethe bathroom, she let him in without thinkingtwice. Only minutes later, a brand-new lap-top—and not coincidentally, Robinson—hadvanished.

This story is a made-up one for our purposes,but the crime is real enough. And even though the 2003annual CSI/FBI computer crime and security surveyshowed a drop in the number of companies reporting

stolen laptops, more than half of respondents in the pastseveral years reported that they had been victimized.

And the real anecdotes are pervasive: A large insurerhad two of its laptops stolen from a locked car. They

contained data on about 200,000 customers,who then had to be informed that they were atrisk of identity theft. At a banking giant, a lap-top containing data on thousands of the bank’smortgage customers was stolen from a rentalcar’s trunk when two employees traveling

together stopped at a convenience store and left the carunlocked with the keys in the ignition. In another inci-dent, the Australian government revealed that over the

ILLUSTRATION BY ANASTASIA VASILAKIS

By Michael Fitzgerald

IN THIS STORY:Tips for keeping laptops safe anddata secure

How to

Thiefa

Laptop Stop

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