Stolen Laptop Contained Prostate Cancer Research Data

News9 in Oklahoma reports “An Oklahoma couple is urging thieves to return a stolen computer they say has the power to save millions of lives. The couple stopped at Panera to grab a meal before heading back to the lab. When they finished, they found their car windows broken and the laptop gone. Unfortunately, most of the data was never backed up, a mistake Shin said could be a major setback in the fight against cancer.”

OMG!!! Frankly, sometimes it is the smartest people that lack the most common sense!!!

In 2003, an estimated 1.5 million laptops were stolen worldwide. Today, that number has climbed to 2.6 million. That’s a 70% increase in just a few years. That’s one stolen laptop every 12 seconds.

Protecting a laptop from theft begins with backup up the data on it. While backing up data isn’t protecting the laptop from theft, but in the end, that is really all that matters. Laptops today are as little as $300.00 and the data on it could be worth millions. And in this case, it is worth lives.

I use a laptop and there isn’t any data on it other than movies. The laptop is used to access my PC where my data is stored and backed up.

Either way for $5.00 a month you can get unlimited backup that syncs your data in the cloud. In addition, backup your data on local drives. I use the Western Digital MyBook drives and have all my data backed up twice and automatically synced with Goodsync.

My data isn’t cancer research, but if I lost all of it, I’d want to die.

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to Home Security Source discussing self defense on Fox Boston.