The other day at the North Side Casino, Billy Williams, the technology director, received an email from the hitting analytics manager indicating her laptop had been stolen out of her car along with her personal and company phones. In addition to demanding immediate replacement of her laptop and phone, the HAM asked Billy how to secure the North Side Casino data that existed on the laptop. She indicated that she had been working on some new data from the new BALLS system for the 2023 season. After assuring her that he would take care of the problem, Billy sat back and relaxed knowing he had put the proper security measures in place to protect the casino’s data.
Losing hardware in today’s technology environment can be either maddening or very easy depending on what data loss protection (DLP) measures a company has instituted. As everyone in technology knows, one of our primary jobs is to protect the company’s data. Whether it is hitting data or a list of casino players’ worth, the value of data to a company can easily be more valuable than the stolen laptop. With that tall task in mind, this article is going to present some items to consider when a laptop or company phone is stolen or goes missing.
Internally, the technology team should disable the stolen device in Active Directory. If for some reason the device were reconnected to the company network an authenticating user would receive a logon error at the laptop.
Some organizations utilize laptop management software. There are a variety of vendors available and you should choose the tool that fits with your security model and not the one sold by Joey Newboat looking to make a sale with a bunch of options that are not going to be used. I have used Absolute. Not to make a sales pitch for Absolute, but the tool allows complete management of laptops (and other mobile devices if such licenses are purchased) once installed on a device. (A screenshot of their website is on the following page.) Some options to look for on a laptop management tool should be the ability to geofence a laptop MAC address. If the laptop is only used internally, the moment it reports from an external IP address an alert could be sent. Look for a tool that cannot be removed from the laptop by non-administrators or is loaded into the BIOS area and cannot be removed unless allowed via a management console.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY DR. MIKE ESSIG IN THE 2023 SPRING EDITION OF GAMING & LEISURE MAGAZINE.