In October 2010, Check Point Software Technologies offered a white paper titled “Guide to the ROI of Encryption”. It argued that encryption pays for itself, because most information theft starts with a physical device going missing. Check Point cited surveys indicating that up to 60 percent of information theft resulted from lost or stolen equipment.
The vendor also made a cost claim. It said its data security products could cut the cost of data exposure from lost devices by 90 percent. The paper was a gated download, and readers had to register, so their details could be passed to the sponsor.
Why lost hardware drove the ROI case
The reasoning rested on a simple observation. Staff carried sensitive company data on laptops and removable media, and those devices left the office every day. When one went missing, the cost was rarely the hardware. It was the notification effort, the investigation, the regulatory exposure and the damage to customers’ trust.
Encryption changes that equation because a lost device holding only unreadable data is, in most cases, a hardware loss rather than a data breach. That was the logic behind the 90 percent figure. It was Check Point’s own claim in 2010, not an independent measurement, and the archived summary gave no method behind it. Buyers weighing the number would have needed to test it against their own loss rates and incident costs.
What the return was meant to cover
An ROI argument for encryption normally compares the cost of deploying and managing the technology with the avoided cost of exposure. The main cost lines are licences, deployment effort, helpdesk load for forgotten credentials and recovery, and the management of cryptographic keys, including how they are stored and recovered. The avoided costs are the breach-related expenses described above.
Check Point’s later product literature kept the same framing. Its datasheet for Endpoint Full Disk Encryption listed central management as a source of return on investment. It said the product protected data from unauthorised access when computers were lost, stolen or left in other vulnerable states. It also described recovery and emergency-access procedures, which matter because the encryption and decryption process is only useful if legitimate users can still get back in.
How the approach was packaged
The datasheet described Full Disk Encryption as covering all information on endpoint drives, including user data, operating system files, and temporary and erased files. It used multi-factor pre-boot authentication to confirm identity before the operating system loaded. Supported options included TPM, smart cards and OPAL self-encrypting drives. Check Point sold complementary components for removable media encryption and port protection, which restricted or blocked physical ports.
A reseller page for the product listed certifications for compliance, including FIPS, Common Criteria and BITS. Those certifications mattered to regulated buyers, such as banks handling payment data, who had to show that stored data was protected.
What happened to the product line
Check Point’s endpoint offering later moved under the Harmony Endpoint name. The company’s current page describes it as Check Point Endpoint Security, formerly Harmony Endpoint, and lists Full Disk Encryption among its data protection capabilities. A 2024 Harmony Endpoint data sheet placed Full Disk Encryption and Removable Media Encryption in its Complete package. Data protection also covered port protection, remote access VPN, endpoint compliance, application control and a firewall.
Gartner’s product listing now labels the standalone Check Point Full Disk Encryption Software as “Legacy”. It describes the product as encrypting the whole contents of a drive and supporting central management of encryption policy.
The core of the 2010 pitch has carried through to current marketing: Check Point’s current page says 70 percent of data loss incidents stem from endpoints. Its older datasheet said that a breach from a lost, stolen or compromised laptop could result in costly fines, lawsuits and lost revenue.
The specific 2010 figures, up to 60 percent of theft from lost equipment and a 90 percent cost reduction, were not repeated in the product material reviewed.
Practical points from the original argument
- Count the cost of an exposure, not just the price of a replacement laptop.
- Include key management and recovery in the cost of ownership.
- Treat vendor savings percentages as claims to be tested against your own incident history.