These are the key findings of the study:

• The average value of a lost or stolen laptop is about $49,246 when you factor in the replacement cost, detection, forensics, data breach, lost intellectual property costs, lost productivity, legal and regulatory expenses etc.
• The potential for a data breach occurring makes a lost or stolen laptop costly to the affected company to the tune of about 80 percent.
• Intellectual property loss is the second highest cost component – about 59 percent of the total cost.
• The faster the affected company learns of the loss, the lower the average cost – about $8,950 if the discovery is made the same day of the loss and about $115,849 if it takes more than a week to discover that the laptop was lost or stolen.
• Lost productivity represents about 1 percent of the total cost when employees have downtime due to the loss of the laptop.
• The most senior level personnel 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 cost for  a manager is $60,781 while a director experiences an average cost of about $61,040.
• The average cost of a lost laptop with a full backup is $69,899 and $39,253 when there is no backup.  The argument is that this inverse relationship is because the existence of a backup makes it easier to confirm the loss of sensitive or confidential data.
• There is almost a $20,000 difference between a lost laptop with encryption and one without.
• The services industry has the highest average full cost – about $112,853, followed by the financial services industry – about $71,820, healthcare ($67,873) and pharmaceuticals ($50,393).
• The industries with the lowest average cost per lost laptop are retail ($8,756) consumer products ($2,194) and manufacturing ($2,184).
• The services industry has the highest average data breach cost at $108,699 while the financial services industry has an average data breach cost of $68,862), healthcare ($43,547) and pharmaceuticals ($42,027). Government, retail and manufacturing had the lowest average data breach cost at $12,017, $3,620 and $44 respectively.
• In terms of intellectual property loss, the technology industry had the highest average cost of $18,205 followed by healthcare ($17,999) and communications ($17,818).

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse estimates that since 2005, about 263 million records have been breached. If we take the average recovery cost of $202 per record as estimated by the Ponemon Institute, that means organizations in the United States have lost a whopping $53 Billion in five years thus making misplaced or stolen laptops one of the costliest exposures most companies face.

Too drastic of a cut may affect the bottom line as it may cripple the ability of the affected organization to compete effectively. Without good employees to make systems work quickly and effectively, it can take longer to make informed business decisions.

This scenario is even more dire in the technology field. With the tough economic times, it is imperative that technology is deployed in ways that will allow users to do more in less time. More and more data is at our disposal these days, but in many small business environments, there is a serious crisis in terms of outdated hardware and software. A recent assessment of a client’s network infrastructure showed that of the thirty plus computers in the shop, only one was ready for Windows 7. In this kind of environment, it will be no surprise if the employees are frequently frustrated because they have to work with slow computers which ultimately impacts their productivity.

It is a fact that outdated equipment can affect productivity especially if the business owner is unable to upgrade hardware and software to accommodate the disk and memory requirements of today’s applications. With aging computers comes the attendant frequent calls to the support team and this disrupts work-flow as the repairs needed may be time consuming.

A reliable technology infrastructure is essential to running a profitable and efficient business. So, in these tough times, small business owners should resist the temptation to make too deep of a cut in their IT budgets. On the other hand, this is also a very good time to consider managed services. A service provider may be able to work out a leasing agreement with a partner and replace aging equipment with brand new ones without too much overhead to the business owner. The service provider can act as the IT Department and provide round the clock monitoring so that the business owner can focus on growing the business and making it profitable. The provider can make sure that systems are running at the most optimal level.

If you are having a hard time working with your current technology infrastructure, we may be able to help you at Tech Prognosis. Contact us here.