Have you seen my PDA?

As head of a mid-sized business, Jack has access to a lot of sensitive information. In order to keep that information safe, he always uses strong passwords with random letters, numbers, and special characters. However, this makes it hard for him to remember all of the login/password pairs he uses. "I thought keeping the passwords on my PDA would solve that problem. It was certainly safer than using a sticky note taped to my computer monitor!"

One day, as he was walking back to the office from lunch, Jack reached into his pocket to check his calendar and the PDA was gone. He panicked. The passwords on it allowed access to many areas of the company's operations. Financial records. Customer databases. Proprietary information. Jack had lost the keys to the kingdom.

As soon as Jack realized his PDA was missing, he called the company's network administrator, who immediately went to work assessing the damage. System logs revealed that the stolen information had in fact already been used to access the system. The company is still trying to determine exactly what data was compromised before the passwords were changed. Had Jack kept his password file encrypted or used a password security tool, it would have taken the thief much longer to access his login information - if he could access it at all.

To learn how to protect the data on your mobile device, see Documents - Data Theft