A recent voluntary survey of 28 US companies found a single lost laptop to cost an average of $49,246. (And no, these laptops did not cost $50k in hardware alone.)
The largest cost to companies is the data breach, which accounts for 80% of this ludicrously large figure because to consulting, law and tech firms, lost IP is a very big deal. Other costs include the hardware, lost productivity and investigation.
But the funny thing is that a mid-level manager’s laptop, filled with vital company data, was worth an average of $60,000, while a CEO’s laptop, filled with archives from the Wall Street Journal and a small collection of Hentai, was usually worth less than half that figure. [The Register and ANDREW YATES/AFP/Getty Images]
