Laptop and notebook theft is a major problem; it rates at between 3 percent to 7 percent of reported thefts, according to experts. In 2006, a company making computer-tracking products estimated 750,000 pieces of equipment a year were being stolen.

Another tracing firm said FBI statistics show two million laptop and notebook computers were stolen in the United States in a recent year. And 50 percent of 403 senior managers surveyed in the Computer Security Institute’s 2007 Computer Crime and Security Survey said their organization experienced laptop or mobile-device theft within the last 12 months.

In June 2008, Dell sponsored a Ponemon Institute study about lost laptops at airports. In this paper, we discovered that 12,000 laptops were lost in U.S. airports each week. Another press release indicated there were more than 3,300 lost at the eight largest airports in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Even if a good many are rapidly retrieved or end up at the lost-and-found desk, others vanish into thin air. Somebody, somewhere will be very happy with them.

I decided to blog on this subject because it was just yesterday that I was a speaker at the Eurosec’2008 conference in Paris. Just after my talk, someone working in the counterespionage and counterterrorism circles explained that data theft and reselling equipment on the black market were not the only targets of thieves. 30 percent of these thefts are dedicated to industrial espionage, he said. In 70 percent of the instances, they are stolen to attempt unlawful acts of software piracy, for downloading pedophilia images, browsing terrorist and extremist web sites, exchanging information via blogs and forums, and for sending terror email for intimidation or for claiming responsibility for bombings.

When a burglary occurs, thieves often use stolen cars. Some days after the crime, the police often find the charred car at the bottom of a forest. Now, the same method is being used by cybercriminals; after it’s been used, the computer is destroyed and never found again. And it’s far easier to steal a laptop than an automobile.