Your work laptop or phone was lost or stolen

A lost device is a data problem as much as a hardware one. The faster we know, the faster we can lock out anyone who finds it.

Symptoms

• A work laptop, tablet or phone is missing, left behind or stolen.
• A personal phone with work email or Teams on it is missing.

Cause

It happens to everyone. What matters is how quickly access is cut off.

Fix

1. Contact us immediately

Tell us which device, when you last had it and whether it was locked. For managed devices we can:

• sign you out everywhere and revoke access to email, Teams and OneDrive
• remotely lock the device
• wipe it, either just company data (on a personal phone) or the whole device (on a company laptop)

2. Change your password

Do this from another device: see Reset your work password.

3. Report a theft to police

Get a report number. Insurers usually ask for one.

4. Personal phones and PCs

• iPhone: use Find My at icloud.com/find.
• Android: use Find Hub at google.com/android/find.
• Windows PC with a personal Microsoft account: use Find my device at account.microsoft.com/devices, if it was turned on beforehand.

If that didn’t work

If the device turns up after a wipe, don’t try to use it. Bring it to us and we’ll set it up again.

When to call us

Always. Even if the device is encrypted with BitLocker and protected by a PIN, we still want to cut off its access and record the incident. A lost device holding personal information may also need to be assessed as a privacy breach.