Jay McBain, Director of Small and Medium Business, Lenovo
The one thing that hasn’t gone down during this economic downturn is the threat of data theft and information security. If you scan the marketplace there are hundreds of products, including hardware, software and services that promise to reduce these threats.
Almost every survey that is conducted with small and medium business customers ranks security in the top few issues that keep them up at night. Lenovo, along with our trusted partners, have been investing in building secure, rock solid, PC devices for over 20 years.
Here is a list of key attributes for PC security:
- Fingerprint Reader – It all starts with physical access to your data. The ability on both ThinkPads and ThinkCentre desktops, workstations and servers to use biometrics for entry greatly reduces the risk of data or identity theft. Did you know that 40% of Helpdesk calls are for password resets? Lenovo Password Manager software links up with the fingerprint reader to provide easy access to protected applications and websites.
- Encryption – combining biometrics with encryption is a great one-two punch that locks down access to data even if the drive is removed from the system and the physical platters are searched for information. You can buy special drives now called FDE or Full Disk Encryption drives that have built in hardware to run as fast with encryption as normal drives do without.
- Anti-theft and Theft Recovery – with 92% of companies of all sizes reporting laptop theft, combined with 42% of non-encrypted drives, the need to protect assets has never been greater. Working with Intel and Absolute Software, Lenovo offers several layers of protection including “poison pill” deactivation, “theft mode” timers with login protection, and emergency remote data deletion. Lenovo has an exclusive with embedded Computrace software on select models.
- Wireless Security – Making sure wireless connections are secure is sometimes difficult for the end user. They don’t tend to understand firewalls, ports, and vulnerabilities and need the PC to be smart enough. Lenovo includes “Access Connections” with the PC which simplifies connections and ensures an extra layer of security.
- Physical Security – from locking the mobile PC and related components with a key lock, to blocking out prying eyes on an airplane with a privacy filter, there are several hardware options that decrease the risk of assets being stolen or data being compromised. Another example is the new Lenovo password enabled hard drive which offers encryption.
- Secure Data Backup and Recovery – storing a backup of data is a good practice for everyone, the risk associated with having data on external drives or CD-ROMs is high. Lenovo offers backup and recovery scenarios that use hidden secured partitions on the hard drive. Lenovo also offers an Online Data Backup service that is very secure and cost effective.
It can seem overwhelming the amount of hardware, software and services in the market to protect asset and data security as well as personal/business identity. Focusing on just a couple of the steps above will go along way to ensure that you do not end up in next years statistics for a security breach.
Lenovo has invested heavily in this area and there are some great new innovations coming out every year.
