An study(PDF) put out by the Ponemon Institute yesterday has the average cost of a lost laptop at $49,246. This includes the following components: replacement cost, detection, forensics, data breach, lost intellectual property, lost productivity, and legal expenses. The total variation was incredibly large from just over $1K to just under $1M.
2 interesting points that I see:
Encryption makes a difference. When lost laptops have encryption, the average cost of the lost laptop is $37,443. If it is not encrypted, the average cost is $56,165. This is almost a $20,000 difference in the cost
Only $20K? I would think that having a properly encrypted laptop would take out mostly all costs other than replacement and lost productivity. Of course, the best encryption is not going to defeat the user who tapes the encryption key on the laptop. However, if all encryption rules are followed I pretty much thought this was a safe bet?
The existence of a full backup increases the average cost of the lost laptop. There is an inverse relationship between the average cost of a lost laptop and the existence of a full backup. The average cost of a lost laptop with a full backup is $69,899 as opposed to $39,253 when there is no backup system. One possible reason for this is that the backup makes it easier to confirm the loss of sensitive or confidential data. In other words, it could be the ignorance is bliss hypothesis.
Wow, save money by not doing backups! Quite an interesting piece of information with data to back it up. Who is going to go to the VP and says we can save money by not doing backups? 
Tie this in with 12,000 lost laptops per week at airports, and that is quite a large chunk of change.
