Laptop users flying by the seat of their pants

By Vivienne Fisher

Despite the importance of much of the work they are doing, very few laptop users are backing up their work - choosing instead to run the gauntlet of crashes, and corruptions.

A recent survey has revealed that most laptop users don't have a systematic data back-up policy in place for information held on laptops used for work.

According to the survey, conducted by Computer Associates, a shocking 88 per cent of users had experienced theft, loss or damage to laptops and 87 per cent admitted to having sensitive or critical data on their machines.

A spokesman for Computer Associates said that organisations focussed on backing up mainframes or other mission-critical systems but laptops simply aren't thought about.

He said "there is no policy for backing up laptops in organisations," citing loss of productivity and competitive information, as well as downtime, as potential ramifications.

Vivienne Fisher writes for ZDNet Australia