Guide To Securing Laptops and Other Mobile Devices

Did you know … protecting your laptop and other devices is essential to avoid data loss, attacks, and thefts?

Has any of your devices been subjected to:

• Unauthorized accesses?
• Theft or loss?
• Natural disasters, such as fires, floods, or others?
• Cyberattacks that resulted in the loss of critical data?

Securing laptops and other mobile devices involves reducing the risk of loss of equipment or data arising from unexpected situations.

Here are some measures that you should implement:

Protect your data

• Install and keep your firewall always enabled
• Use security software with real-time protection programmes and keep them up to date by setting updates to automatic
• Use strong passwords that are aligned with the effective security policy of your organization (learn more here)
• Activate disk encryption (Full Disk Encryption) whenever possible

Make security backups

• Backup your professional and personal data regularly to secure storage sources (learn more in point 3)
• Make sure at least one of the backups gives you access to all the information you need to continue to perform your duties, in case of theft or loss of your laptop
• Protect your storage with strong passwords, preventing third-party access to your data in unexpected or accidental situations
• Make sure that you observe and comply with the backup policy and mechanisms defined by your organization
• Make sure you store your backups elsewhere, so that you don’t compromise your backups and your main source of information concurrently

Protect your devices

• Restrict access to your devices by using passwords
• Avoid displaying access information in unprotected places and near the equipment, and use two-factor authentication, whenever possible
• Do not install, open, or access suspicious apps, links, websites, documents, or attachments. These actions can compromise equipment functioning and access to data therein
• Lock your laptop whenever you go away, avoiding unauthorized access during that period
• Keep your devices in secure locations with restricted access when you are not using them
• In case of theft or loss of work devices, report it immediately to your organization’s security team