Secure your PCs and laptops

An uncomfortable truth: no matter what size your business, security matters. Losing a laptop not only results in lost productivity and sales, but could make your company a target for criminals. Even worse, a data breach can result in the loss of customer data, damage to the company’s reputation, theft of intellectual property and even hefty fines.

These aren’t uncommon threats, nor are they exaggerated. In a 2010 study by the Ponemon Institute, 86% of the IT professionals surveyed reported that someone in their organisation had had a laptop lost or stolen. Even worse: in six out of every ten such cases, a security breach happened as a result in a security breach.

Cyber-crime now costs UK businesses over £21 billion a year, while the UK’s Federation of Small Businesses reports that 54% of small businesses were a victim in the 12 months leading up to February 2009

So what would you do if a laptop was stolen? Or thieves broke into your premises and took your PCs? And exactly how much company data is sitting on your employees’ smartphones, tablets and laptops?

By taking even simple precautions you can dramatically reduce the risks. With the right products and services, you can make yourself a deeply unattractive target for cyber-fraud and cyber-crime.

Security fundamentals
Good security isn’t just about installing anti-virus and deadlocking the office door at night: it’s about taking a holistic approach, involving physical measures, software, simple company policies and employee education.

But we’ll start with internet security software. PC Pro’s A-Listed suite, Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security 2011, is very affordable, easy to use and offers excellent protection, and Dell goes a step further by offering the option of Trend Micro’s Worry-Free Business Security Services software on its business PCs and laptops.

Microsoft’s Security Essentials is free to companies with ten employees or fewer.

If you use Windows 7, then Microsoft’s own Security Essentials package gives you solid, basic protection and is free for use on fewer than ten PCs. Combine a good security suite with the excellent firewall tools built into Windows 7, and you’ve made the job of cyber-criminals that much harder.

There’s more to securing your system than just installing software; you also need to maintain it.

Yet there’s more to securing your system than just installing software; you also need to maintain it. Automatic Windows updates keep your operating system patched and protected from the latest vulnerabilities, so make sure your users don’t switch it off. For instance, set Windows to update at the end of the working day or overnight to minimise disruptions.

The right Windows

If you haven’t moved to Windows 7 yet, think about doing so. Not only does it offer a raft of improved security features compared to previous versions, it’s also better equipped to deal with malware.

“All you really need to know is summed up in the findings of the recently published Microsoft Security Intelligence Report,” says Davey Winder, PC Pro’s security expert and a business consultant. “This reveals that Windows 7 is five times less vulnerable to malware infection than Windows XP [while] Windows Vista is twice as vulnerable to infection than Windows 7.”

Winder also tips Windows 7 Professional over Home Premium, and Windows 7 Ultimate over that. “I would recommend that any business which really cares about the security of the data it’s handling to jump straight to the top of the tree and invest in Windows 7 Ultimate”, says Winder. “You gain both BitLocker drive encryption (which is pretty self-explanatory) and the AppLocker feature (which isn’t).”

See Seven security features of Windows 7 for more details on both technologies.

Good practice makes perfect

Some steps are just good practice, but good practice that not everyone always follows. First, make sure your systems are set up with proper user accounts, so that employees are signing in without admin rights. This instantly restricts the flow of third-party apps and malware onto your business systems.

While you’re at it, ensure that passwords are being used and fit for purpose. Length and complexity are key. Throw in capitals and numbers, or use a phrase instead of a simple word, and that password will be much harder to crack. And don’t allow people to stick a Post-It note with their username and password onto their screen bezel!

A simple Kensington lock makes a laptop harder to steal while anchored to the desk, while non-removable tags and branded lids make a laptop more difficult to sell, and so less attractive to thieves.

Physical security is vital. A simple Kensington lock makes a laptop harder to steal while anchored to the desk, while non-removable tags and branded lids – often relatively inexpensive extras – make a laptop more difficult to sell, and so less attractive to thieves. On a desktop system, case-locks can help keep your PC and components more secure.

Biometric security – again an affordable option on business-focused laptops – should be used. “A lot of our laptops ship with biometric security,” says Dell ProSupport technician Zahid Mahood, “and we sometimes just have to educate our customers that they have access to these features.”

Employee education has a huge part to play in business security. As long as employees download unauthorised applications or media files over the internet, share business-related information over social networks, click on suspicious emails or Facebook updates and send data unencrypted over email, cyber-criminals will have an easier time.

Failsafe measures

Whatever steps you take, there’s always a chance that some threat will penetrate your defences. That’s why there are two measures every business should be taking.

The first is obvious: backup. Business continuity is just as important to a small enterprise as to a large one, and the loss of a laptop or data can lose you days or weeks of work and sales. “I recommend to a lot of customers – particularly small businesses – that they keep a regular backup” says Mahood. “All PCs are essentially hardware, and there’s always a risk that hardware can fail. It’s just essential for disaster recovery.” With external hard drives, NAS devices and secure online backup so affordable, there’s really no excuse.

The three basic steps every small business should take to protect data are one: encrypt. Two: encrypt. And three: encrypt.

The second? We’ll defer to PC Pro’s Davey Winder: “The three basic steps every small business should take to protect data are one: encrypt. Two: encrypt. And three: encrypt.” If a PC has Windows 7 Professional, use the Encrypted File System to encrypt any sensitive or business-critical files or folders (see boxout, above right). If it has Windows 7 Ultimate, then use BitLocker to encrypt the whole hard drive.

“The users won’t even have to do anything different, as Windows will handle the encryption transparently,” insists Winder. “And if files must be carried around on portable media, then use Windows Ultimate and BitLocker To Go to encrypt them, along with strong admin policies that prevent users from storing data on non-secured drives.”

Never assume that encryption should only be an issue when files leave the office. According to Winder, the biggest mistake small businesses make is: “thinking it’s all about data on the move and forgetting about data at rest. Data should always be encrypted to safeguard against loss.”

Just ensure that you maintain backups of the security certificates and keys required to decrypt the data. Without them, your data could be a little too secure. After all, it would be a tragedy if a stolen laptop resulted in irreversible data loss because you’ve lost the vital key.

Getting help

Through a combination of encryption, backups, physical protection and prevention, you can help secure your computers and safeguard the precious data stored inside. However, you can make the task even easier with a little outside help. Dell provides a wide range of services that can help protect and secure your PCs and data, through its configuration options, its business solutions services and Dell ProSupport.

Dell ProSupport is offered on all Dell’s business and enterprise systems, whether a single PC or a massive thousand-seat deployment. By providing a range of packages, ProSupport gives Dell’s customers the 24/7 phone support, advice and proactive assistance they need to respond to IT challenges and focus on their core business.

“ProSupport helps our customers respond to the challenges they face on a daily basis, freeing up their time so they can focus on utilising their IT more strategically,” says EMEA ProSupport Product Manager Michael Lynch. “Providing support for a responsive IT infrastructure can be costly, risky and time-consuming . With ProSupport, customers can choose the support model that best suits their unique requirements and budget.”

ProSupport's multivendor option covers PCs, laptops and server systems from HP, IBM, Lenovo and Acer, and software from selected third parties.

ProSupport doesn’t have to be confined to Dell systems, either. With the multivendor option it covers PCs, laptops and server systems from HP, IBM, Lenovo and Acer, and software from selected third parties. By putting all your support in one place, with Dell collaborating with third parties on your behalf, you can cut away at the logistics of solving your problem, and trust Dell to simply get it fixed.

“IT organisations waste significant resources managing complex heterogeneous environments, working with multiple vendors and service contracts, keeping up with warranty renewals across vendors, and supporting hardware beyond standard warranty – Dell Multivendor Support provides a simple solution to a complex problem,” says Lynch.

ProSupport offers other services to help preserve and protect your business data. ProSupport Hard Drive Data Recovery ensures a malfunctioning hard drive doesn’t necessarily mean a loss of data, while ProSupport Certified Data Destruction ensures that any hard drives in redundant or non-working systems can be securely wiped, complete with certification to prove compliance with legal regulations.

And Dell has other services that can help secure your systems. Along with Trend Micro’s Worry-Free Business Security, which provides anti-malware, URL filtering and data-loss prevention tools aimed specifically at the needs of small businesses, Dell laptops can also be ordered pre-configured with Absolute Software’s Computrace technology. This gives businesses and authorities tools to track lost or stolen laptops, shut them down and wipe their data remotely.

Finally, Dell’s Data Protection | Encryption service, available on Latitude laptops and OptiPlex desktops, takes care of encryption for you, making the process practically invisible for employees and pain-free for IT admins.

If you want further details on any of these products and services, call Dell on 0844 444 3001.