Many methods to protect the data and to prevent theft have been developed, including alarms, laptop locks, and visual deterrents such as stickers or labels.
[1] In a study surveying 329 private and public organizations published by Intel in 2010, 7.1% of employee laptops were lost or stolen before the end of their usefulness lifespan.
This startling trend in burglaries lends itself to an increase in identity theft and fraud due to the personal and financial information commonly found on laptops.
A survey conducted in multiple countries suggested that employees are often careless or deliberately circumvent security procedures, which leads to the loss of the laptop.
FDE provides protection before the operating system starts up with pre-boot authentication, however precautions still need to be taken against cold boot attacks.
There are a number of tools available, both commercial and open source that enable a user to circumvent passwords for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
[8] Passwords provide a basic security measure for files stored on a laptop, though combined with disk encryption software they can reliably protect data against unauthorized access.
[13] In 2007, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs agreed to pay $20 million to current and former military personnel to settle a class action lawsuit.
[14] In 2007 the Financial Services Authority (FSA) fined the UK's largest building society, Nationwide, £980,000 for inadequate procedures when an employee's laptop was stolen during a domestic burglary.
The FSA noted that the systems and controls fell short, given that it took the Nationwide three weeks to take any steps to investigate the content on the missing laptop.