Fox has since described the burglary as "opportunistic" and said no sensitive documents were stolen.
At the moment it is not known whether the laptop was encrypted. If not, the consequences for the Conservatives could be considerable.
Chris McIntosh, CEO of hardware encryption vendor Stonewood, which provides encryption for the UK armed forces, among others, commented:
"For Liam Fox's sake, I hope that this laptop was encrypted. Laptops will always be stolen, the important thing is making sure that the data on them can't be accessed and abused. If this laptop was encrypted, then Liam Fox has nothing to worry about.
“However if not, we could soon see the contents being leaked to the media and even worse repercussions [for the Conservative Party]”, McIntosh explained. “The public will not be impressed if they see that the Conservative Party aren't taking adequate care of their own data and this could damage [public] confidence in the party's ability to protect government data should they get into office.”
It is ironic that the timing of this stolen laptop coincides with the day of a defence manifesto launch and the debate on foreign policy – both of which must cover national and data security.
Jamie Cowper, European marketing director at PGP, declares the burgulary of Liam Fox’s laptop as “a timely reminder to everyone of the importance of data protection”.
“Whilst we fully expect that the shadow defence secretary has taken the appropriate security precautions to safeguard any election secrets that may be stored on his laptop”, Cowper said, “this incident highlights to the rest of us that we need to take adequate steps to protect confidential personal and business information in case it falls into the wrong hands”.
Cowper advised that data encryption solutions, “teamed with a strong passphrase and a regular backup process, should ensure that if you are unlucky enough to be burgled, at least your information remains safe.”