By Curtis Bagnall, Solution Engineer at Umbrella Managed Systems, talking about mobile encryption for peace of mind.
If you think about it, there’s a lot of data that gets saved on our computers and phones for business and personal use. Between financial information, company files, passwords and personal data, our entire digital life is stored in various places on our hardware. Not only that, even files you’ve deleted from your computer years ago could still be recovered with the right recovery software. You can find a few options with some light Google searching.
If a laptop or mobile device ever comes up missing or stolen, it can cause a lot of stress and anxiety. The process of trying to figure out exactly what was lost or compromised is overwhelming. The best way to protect your information from being stolen or compromised is to implement whole disk encryption on your device.
What is Encryption and How does it Work?
Encryption is a technology that protects information by converting it into unreadable code. This code can’t be deciphered by unauthorized people. When an encrypted computer is powered on, a prompt screen comes up that requires a passphrase or security token before access is allowed. Once the appropriate passphrase or security token is entered, the data on the computer is unlocked and available for authorized use.
If you were wondering what a security token is, it usually comes in the form of a smart card or USB device that generates a rotating security key. This key value changes every few seconds.
Without the right passphrase or key, the information on the computer stays encrypted and secure.
What Will Having Encryption do for your Company?
Encryption gives you peace of mind. You know that anything saved on your laptop, or an employees laptop, will be safe and secure if it goes missing.
If your company is in the medical field, having a whole disk encryption process will significantly reduce the risk of having to report a breach to HIPAA. This could easily save your company from painful, or devastating fines.
If your company takes payments from clients, and you store receipts, invoices, credit card numbers, etc. on your devices, you would also reduce the risk of fines and the need to publicly report a breach.
How Umbrella Utilizes Encryption
At Umbrella, we utilize encryption through software called Sophos. It encrypts our devices using Windows Bitlocker, a native encryption software available in Windows 8 Pro and above. Sophos allows us to automatically encrypt a laptop as soon as it has joined the business domain. This happens without affecting performance for the end user. It also allows us to fully monitor the device to ensure complete encryption. What happens if a device goes missing or gets stolen? We can send a wipe command that will erase all data on the hard drive the next time it comes online. We can also locate any of our devices geographically to see where the laptop is when it comes online.
If you are interested in protecting your company’s data or would like to hear more about the options and benefits that encryption can provide, please give us a call. We’d be happy to help!
