Threats through Lost and Stolen Device

This is a new emerging issue for cybersecurity. Often mobile hand-held devices are lost while people are on the move. Lost mobile devices are becoming even. a larger security risk to corporations.

The cybersecurity threat under this scenario is scary; owing to a general lack of security in mobile devices, it is often not the value of the hand-held device that is important but rather the content that, if lost or stolen, can put a company at a serious risk of sabotage, exploitation or damage to its professional integrity, as most of the times the mobile hand-held devices are provided by the organization. Most of these lost devices have wireless access to a corporate network and have potentially very little security, making them a weak link and a major headache for security administrators.

Protecting Data on Lost Devices

For protecting data that are stored persistently on a device, there are two precautions that individuals can take to prevent disclosure of the data stored on a mobile device: (a) encrypting sensitive data and (b) encrypting the entire file.system. Data that are stored on hard disks in persistent memory or on removable memory sticks should be protected. There are many third party solutions/tools available to protect data on the lost devices, including encrypting the servers where a database file is residing. There are solutions using which individuals can enforce a self-destruct policy to destroy privileged data on a lost device or create a database action to delete the data on a user's device using a suitable tool.

A key point here is that the organizations should have a clear policy on how to respond to the loss or theft of a device, whether it is data storage, a PDA or a laptop. There should be a method for the device owner to quickly report the loss, and device owners should be aware of this method. Writing the emergency contact information on the device itself is unlikely to be very helpful.