Mobile working offers many benefits to small businesses, but when it comes to keeping sensitive business information secure, issues can arise because so much of it is held on technology devices that go home with staff.

According to research from EE, employees lose more than 10 million devices with data on them every year. Some of the most common places to forget devices include the toilet, taxis, and public transport, meaning it is very hard to know who might have found your sensitive data and what they might do with it.

So what should you do when a device gets lost or stolen? The following tips should help to mitigate the issue for your business.

Have a policy in place

With so many devices being lost every year, it is important to consider the risks this could pose to your company.

Introduce a comprehensive security plan that all employees must follow as a first step. Secondly, ensure that proper security measures are installed on devices. These can include software that will wipe data remotely, as well as placing location-tracking apps on devices so they can be recovered. On the most basic level, simply ensuring that all devices are password protected will minimise some risk to your business.

Ensure loss is reported

Having measures in place to ensure you can wipe data from a laptop, tablet or phone if it is lost will come to naught if your employees never tell you that the device is gone. This is a big problem if your employees are using their own technology for work – a practice known as “Bring your own device” (BYOD) – as your employees may not think that reporting the loss is relevant.

Every minute counts if a phone or laptop is lost, yet a recent study by Kaspersky in the US revealed that only half of employees report the loss of a device within one day. To mitigate this, it’s important to stress continually to colleagues that reporting the loss of any device that holds any business data is key, and must be done as soon as possible.

Act immediately

Once a device is reported as lost or stolen, it’s important to swing into action immediately. Activate any mobile security on the device to wipe what is on there. However, you need to be aware that this is not a failsafe policy, as astute data thieves will put the mobile into aeroplane mode to prevent data being wiped. You will also need to ensure that your mobile provider knows about the loss to prevent any bills being run up on your account.

If you believe a client’s data has been compromised, let them know so that appropriate steps can be taken. Again, acting quickly is crucial.

Review your policies

After a device has been lost or stolen, ensure you revisit your security policies to prevent any events that will damage your reputation. Greater data encryption, and more reliance on cloud-based access (rather than downloads) should ensure that there is no data available on lost devices in future.