Is your laptop Hole or a Plug?

Laptops are the integral devices to carry or use Intellectual Property, Sensitive Business Information and Digital Assets for an enterprise.

Enterprises use laptops with four perspectives.

1. A. Anytime Anywhere work by enterprise owners
2. B. Anytime Anywhere work by senior managers
3. C. As a pre-configured device, facilitating technical service by service engineer
4. D. As a pre-configured device facilitating marketing interaction with prospect by sales team.

Let us understand the best practices to use laptops at enterprise level. For simple understanding, I am putting it in a form of questionnaire.

1. Do you have process to trigger backup of every laptop, at least every day?
Answer must be Yes, Automatic

2. Do you have process to verify good completion of backup?
Answer must be Yes, Centralized, User Independent

3. Do you have provision to version the backup so that virus infection or ransomware on laptop does not harm you?
Answer must be Yes, backups should be versioned, else, virus or ransomware will make it useless.

4. Where and how is backup data stored?
Answer must be, on Data Center, Through VPN. Don’t rely on users to save data manually on Google Drives or Dropbox. They may and may not.

5. Can user access backup?
Answer must be No. If user can access backup, she / he can delete it also. Data backed up on Google Drives or Dropbox can be wiped out by user himself.

6. How do you segregate enterprise data and personal data on laptop for backup process?
Answer must be, user is given mutually exclusive drives for enterprise and personal usage. These drives cannot be accessed simultaneously. Backup is triggered only for enterprise drive.

7. How do you prevent or monitor USB usage on laptops to prevent data theft?
Answer must be, in place system to block USB port, to restrict one way (from outside to inside and not from inside to outside) use of USB ports or to report USB use on laptop

8. How do you prevent data theft by email from laptop?
Answer must be, in place system to enforce usage of only corporate email system (no personal email system) with email sending policies.

9. How do you control Internet access on laptops for information security when they are outside of your firewall coverage?
Answer must be, in place system to restrict Internet access natively whether or not, they are connected to enterprise firewall.

10. Can you prevent laptop user to push data to personal drives or personal email ids?
Answer must be, yes, when enterprise drive is accessed, users have limited access to internet. When full internet is accessed, user does not have access to enterprise drive.

Deliberation on above 10 points will decide, whether your laptops are holes or plugs. Try to answer them and you will know your enterprise’s vulnerability quotient.

There are brilliant solutions at very affordable cost to convert your laptops from Holes to Plugs.

Vishal Shah
Founder and CEO,
Synersoft Technologies Pvt Ltd