U.S. travelers lose 12,000 units a week

New research sponsored by Dell and conducted by the Ponemon Institute finds that a staggering 12,000 laptops carried by business travelers are lost, missing or stolen every week at U.S. airports—and about two-thirds of them are never reclaimed. The company’s research determined that the highest rate of lost laptops is at Los Angeles International, where on average, 1,200 a week go missing. Also ranking high on the lost-laptop list are Miami International (1,000 a week), New York JFK (900), Chicago O’Hare (825), Newark (750) and LaGuardia (630). Only one-third of the lost laptops are reclaimed, the company said. “The other 67 percent of subsequently found laptops remain in the airport until they are disposed of. As a result, there are potentially millions of files containing sensitive or confidential data that may be accessible to a large number of airport employees or contractors.” Where are laptops most often lost? According to the Ponemon Institute study, 40 percent of lost laptops go missing at the security checkpoint, while 23 percent are left at the departure gates, nine percent in restrooms and seven percent in restaurants or bars. More than half of the travelers surveyed said their laptops contain confidential or sensitive information, but two-thirds said they take no special steps to safeguard the data on their hard drives. Some 42 percent said they don’t even back up their laptop data. Dell publicized the research to promote a new suite of data protection services it is launching, including laptop tracking and recovery, a remote way to delete data, and other protections.