"True" cost of a lost business laptop: $50,000

So you lost your laptop from the office. No big deal. They'll give you a new one by the end of the day and you can get back to work, right?

According to a new study (based on interviews with 22 U.S. businesses) sponsored by Intel, actually replacing your lost hardware is one of the cheapest components of a lost notebook PC. When it comes to computers with business information on them, additional expenses rapidly add up to account for detection of the lost machine, forensics, data breach, lost intellectual property costs, lost productivity, and legal, consulting and regulatory expenses. The total average damage assessed by the report: A whopping $49,246.

Loss of data ("data breach") is the big expense, accounting for 80 percent of the cost of a lost machine. The value of lost intellectual property accounts for 59 percent of the remainder of the damages, according to the study.

Naturally, the value of lost equipment varies widely depending on how the machine is used and by whom: Laptops lost by senior executives are far more valuable than lower-level employees, and laptops from more security-sensitive industries (financial services, health care, etc.) are inherently more costly than those used in manufacturing or retail businesses.

What can help mitigate these expenses? Having full backups available first, followed by encrypting the data on the machine. Recovering a lost laptop quickly (by whatever means) is also key to keeping costs down, as they mount over time as contingency plans (like notifying customers and suppliers of the breach) have to be generated and executed.

Before you get too panicked, keep in mind that the vast majority of lost machines cost less than $4,000 in total damages, and that a few serious outliers -- including one case of a lost machine whose loss was pegged at nearly a million bucks in damages -- are responsible for the bulk of these jaw-dropping numbers.

And as The Register notes (linked below), the real goal of the study is to encourage purchases of laptops with Intel's vPro encryption technology -- but the report really doesn't do that good of a job at pushing the value of this feature. Why? Laptops with encryption features, per the report, still cost an average of about $40,000 in losses despite their inherently better security. Why? Probably because it's too complicated for many users and IT departments to set up the encryption properly.

Whoops.

Via The Register.