New stats from the British government show its various departments lost an average of one computer per week over the past year. The good news is that the government says only one of those losses put any personal data at risk -- although it's hard to verify the claims of some departments that the data on their devices was encrypted or otherwise made safe. It's hard to get too upset about the missing devices, since it seems inevitable that any any organization with a large number of employees carrying laptops and other devices around will lose some or have them stolen. The issue isn't the devices, or at least it shouldn't be; the issue is data. It may be an easy way to score political points by pointing out how often physical devices are lost, but the value of a $2000 laptop or $500 smartphone pales in comparison to the value of the data, or the data it can access. Care must be taken to ensure that security policies and procedures don't place importance on securing physical devices at the expense of securing data. For a start, it would be nice to make people accountable for data they have, but that's probably a stretch.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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