This is what the criminal is thinking, so better be prepared. We frequently hear news of a laptop holding sensitive information having been stolen. Bad in itself, but the reports often note that the information was unencrypted. Doubly bad. Certainly, physical security is important — you want to do everything you can to prevent physical access to, or theft of, your computer — but data security is senior. Why? Because the real value lies in the data, not the hardware. With laptop prices averaging around $600.00 for a new system, a criminal is only going to be able to get $150 or so on the black market for some kid's stolen laptop.
But, if the hard drive in that laptop contains any sensitive information like bank account, credit card, or social security numbers, the thief can sell that computer for tens or hundreds of times the value of the hardware. From the thief’s point of view, any laptop sitting on the seat or floor of a decent car or a desktop PC in a middle class home office could belong to someone who has access to valuable information, and that information could be stored on that computer. Given enough information, anyone can then assume your identity easily, something you certainly don't want to happen.
However, if the hard drive is encrypted, the thief is out of luck. Without the pass phrase used to encrypt the drive, no one is going to read anything off of it. Obviously, you don't want your laptop to be stolen, but that's a matter of physical security. I’ll cover that later. For now, I present Maxim #7:
If you store sensitive information on a PC or laptop, even if it’s only personal information, encrypt the folders or drives where the information is stored and use an unguessable pass phrase as the encryption key.
In the next article, I'll show you step-by-step how to download TrueCrypt -the best Open Source encryption solution available- and create secure, encrypted files that no one can break.
Ken Harthun is the Security Editor for Daves Computer Tips. He also writes about security issues for IT Knowledge Exchange and blogs on general Geek things at Ask The Geek. You can read more about Ken here.