Is there anything more frightening than realizing that your laptop is stolen? Your laptop contains all sorts of personal information, including social media data, health and medical information, and banking passwords. Your laptop may also have important company information.
You’ll need to act fast, but first, don’t panic. The calmer you stay during this process, the more effectively you can handle the problem. Here’s what you’ll need to do.
Stolen Laptop Guide for Drivestrike Users
If you have Drivestrike installed on your laptop, issue a remote wipe command immediately. Then, note the location of the device using Drivestrike’s remote location feature.
Once that’s done, call the police and tell them where your laptop is located. If you need help describing your laptop to law enforcement, take a look at your Device page on Drivestrike. This way, you can provide important details like your device’s serial number.
If your laptop is a company resource or connects to company resources, you should also let your manager and IT department know about the theft.
Finally, we recommend that you change the passwords for all of your online accounts right away. While this action won’t completely eliminate the risk of stolen data, it will significantly reduce that risk.
General Stolen Laptop Guide
If you don’t have Drivestrike installed on your laptop, you won’t be able to wipe the data from your machine, but you can — and should — call the police as soon as possible. Tell the police where you believe your laptop was stolen, and describe the machine in as much detail as possible. If you have your laptop’s serial number written down, provide it to the police.
Contact Your Workplace
Next, if you use your laptop for company purposes, call your manager and IT department to let them know about the theft. This way, they can get to work protecting and erasing potentially compromised data.
Change Your Passwords
Even if your laptop is password-protected, savvy thieves can sometimes figure them out or use workarounds to access your data. As soon as possible, change all of your online passwords to reduce the threat of data breaches.
Try to Get a Location
Next, you can try to get a general location of your stolen laptop by logging into the accounts that you commonly use on your laptop. Examples include Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft. If your computer is logged into any of those accounts, then the accounts may have captured the location of their most recent user session. If so, then you can use that information to get a better idea of your laptop’s location.
How Drivestrike Can Help
The simplest way to protect your data in the event of laptop theft is using Drivestrike. Drivestrike allows users to wipe data remotely in case of theft or loss. Drivestrike can also track your laptop, making it simpler to recover if it goes missing.
If your laptop is missing, then we may be able to install Drivestrike on the machine remotely. It’s a difficult task, but not impossible. Options are available in your laptop is part of an ActiveDirectory group, or we may be able to entice the thieves to install Drivestrike under a different name.
Contact us now if we can help you further. Drivestrike is available for less than $1 per device per month when you use Drivestrike to protect multiple devices.
