Protect The Data On That Laptop! Many SU employees use laptop computers to carry out their day-to-day job activities. If you are one of these employees, don’t forget to periodically back up the data on your laptop to a network server. If your laptop stops working, you could possibly lose any data that had not been backed up. The ITS supported network servers are kept in a physically and logically secure environment, and are also backed up on a regular basis with some of the backups rotated to a secure offsite location. This should provide you with adequate backup protection for your data. Backups made to removable media such as USB drives and CDs/DVDs should not be used, if possible, because of the potential for these to become lost or to fall into the hands of people that should not have access to the data. This is especially true if your laptop’s data is considered Confidential or Enterprise Data. You can read more about the classification of data in the Syracuse University Information Security Standard on the ITS website at http://its.syr.edu/security/standards/ITSecurity-standard.pdf. If the data on your laptop is considered Confidential or Enterprise Data, it should also be encrypted as outlined in the ITS Encryption Security Standard found at http://its.syr.edu/security/standards/encryption-standard.pdf. Encryption will help protect the data in the event your laptop is lost, stolen, or is accessed by an unauthorized person. One way to think of your laptop is that it is a temporary work area with the data not permanently saved until it is on the University’s network servers. If you have any questions about backing up your laptop or the encryption of data, feel free to contact ITS Security at itsecurity@listserv.syr.edu or AMAS at amas@listserv.syr.edu.