What to do when a work laptop goes missing

Most missing work laptops are not stolen. They went home with someone, got left in a truck, or are sitting under a pile of paperwork in the back office. But you do not know which one it is when you first notice, and the laptop has your email, your customer list and probably a saved password or two on it. So treat it as lost until it turns up, and do the cheap things first.

The first hour

1. Ask around, properly. Message the person who used it last, and anyone who might have borrowed it. Check vehicles, meeting rooms and the lost and found. This solves it more often than anything technical, so do it before you panic.

2. Try to locate it. If the laptop is signed in to a Microsoft or Google account, Find my device may show where it last checked in. If your business uses a device management tool, it may be able to do the same. A location is a hint, not proof: it shows where the laptop last had internet, not where it is now.

3. Lock it. If you can lock the laptop remotely, do it now. You can always unlock it when it turns up, and a locked laptop is a paperweight to anybody else.

4. Sign it out of everything. In your email and file sharing admin pages, sign that user out of all sessions, or at least that device. Then change the passwords for that person's work email and anything else important they used on it. This is the step that actually protects your data, because it works even if the laptop never comes back.

5. Write down what was on it. Customer records, payment details, anything personal about staff. If the laptop is not encrypted and it held personal information about customers, you may have notification duties depending on your state. Knowing what was on it makes that conversation short.

When to stop looking

If it has not turned up after a day or two, and it has not checked in anywhere, assume it is gone. File a police report if it was likely stolen (your insurer will ask for one), then wipe it remotely if you can, and replace it. Do not let it sit in limbo for weeks with the user's accounts still signed in.

What to set up now, so next time is boring

Everything above is easier if a few things are already in place:

• Encrypt the drive. BitLocker on Windows, FileVault on Mac, and the encryption option at install on Linux. With it on, a lost laptop is a hardware cost. Without it, anyone with a screwdriver can read the drive.
• Require a screen lock. A few minutes idle, then a password or PIN. It sounds obvious, and half the laptops in a typical small office do not have it.
• Keep files in the cloud, not on the desktop. If work lives in OneDrive, Google Drive or your business system, a missing laptop costs you an afternoon of setup instead of lost work.
• Know who has which laptop. A simple list with the serial number and who it is assigned to. You need it for the police report, the insurer and your own sanity.
• Turn on two-step sign-in for email. A stolen password alone then is not enough to get in.

None of this costs much, and all of it is the difference between "we lost a laptop" and "we had a data breach".

How we handle it

For the computers we look after, a lot of this is in place before anything goes missing: screen lock is enforced, every machine is listed with who uses it, and a missing laptop can be located on a map and locked from one screen. This week we added that locate button to the fleet we run at Zych's Certified Auto, where laptops move between the office, the bays and people's trucks every day.

If a laptop leaving your business would keep you up at night, our employee offboarding checklist covers the same ground for when a person leaves instead of a computer, and our managed IT service is how we set it up for you.