Professorial duties and cyber attacks

The NYT recently reported on the rise of cyber attacs against universities. Besides the suggestion that academics not take their laptops on international travel, the article provided very little advice for academics on how to prevent a loss of data. The issue is complicated by policies making it risky or even illegal to possess student's personal data on a laptop. My thoughts are to keep communication with students and their grades on university computers, but my personal research on my own machine. I welcome further suggestions.