Protect and secure data on your laptop

Losing a laptop sucks; losing important data and passwords is far worse. Here's what I do to protect my data.

Step 1: How important is the data on your laptop?

A few weeks ago, my car was broken into while I was eating dinner between work and home. Unfortunately, my computer was in one of the stolen bags (let me know if you see a ThinkPad with a giant squid painted on it!) and chances are it will never be recovered. The laptop was my primary computer and had everything: Years of work, pictures, half-finished musical compositions, stuff for Instructables(!), passwords, and financial data.

Fortunately, I had instituted an agressive program of backups and encrypting my passwords. I didn't lose a single document and am not particularly worried about identity theft from information on the laptop.

There are ton of different ways to do this. So, if my specific solution doesn't work for you, I hope to inspire you to figure out a solution that does.

Comments

[HapHazard]

Have you looked into TrueCrypt? (http://www.truecrypt.org/). I love the encrypted partiton that not only holds data but application programs also.

[w477s]

my friend coopoprates in a bank and he had all datas on craptop (which was stolen) but that guy didn't know how to crack truecrypt and he left craptop on some place and left and smbdy told bro and he took laptop... also sys logger told him ther was no copying :)))) datas saved, noone copied them, yays! :)

[Weissensteinburg]

I recently discovered the Boot up password and Hard Drive passwords that you can activate via your BIOS. The Boot-up password makes your computer pretty useless without it, and the HDD password makes your HDD inoperable without physically opening it and moving the platters to an identical case, right?

[conrad2468]

the ironic thing is you need a password to access your password so what will hold that password?!?!?!?!?

[ewilhelm]

My brain.

[Redgerr]

rofl! instead of your brain wright it on a post it, take apart your computer and put it inside the case :O or just put it somewhere where you will remember :)

[puffyfluff]

You need a password to access your password, and if you wright it on a sticky note you'll still have to store the location of the sticky note in your brain.

[Redgerr]

true

[puffyfluff]

Whoever stole your laptop is so lucky! They got all the ideas, plans and workings for the future of Instructables!

_{But sorry about your other stuff...}

[Big Bwana]

ewilhelm, some great pointers, I really like step 2 an ounce of prevention is worth more then that 6 lbs of a new laptop will cure ... Also now you can get P.G.P. 9.5.X home or enterprise with whole disk encryption and it asks for a password before starting the OS (( Yes it works on linix / dual boot / And MAC units to )) so every thing on your hard disk is encrypted, including boot sectors, system files, and swap files. (( ok the MBR is not encrypted )) Making it useless to most petty crooks looking for there next high, while yes you can eventually crack it most people don't have N.S.A. resources required.... ((( you get to pick AES 256 bit, cast5 128 bit, twofish 256 bit ))) So they either junk it or reinstall a OS and start new ... And I like it because you can encrypt DVD's CD's and flash disk with ease .. (( oh and it runs on a my cheapo dell 333MHz, which if it got stolen yes I'd be mad but I could live with out it ....it's only like $50 to $75 to replace if I look around )) (( Or if you have Vista ultimate or enterprise and a newer laptop, did I mention a new laptop, we are talking about VISTA.. And it should also have an installed or external T.P.M. You can use it's Bitlocker disk encryption, but it's cheaper to go with P.G.P.9.5.X home, new laptops are not cheap )) and bitlocker uses 128 bit AES by default )) and yes it has been compromised, but yes you would of had to really piss some one off to goto this level .. ))

[rickysio]

You could have a security program that shreds everything in the hard drive when the password has been attempted a certain amount of times.

[peter register]

IMPORTANT TIP:Turn off blue tooth when you turn off the laptop.It is known that a thief can use a bluetooth equipped device like a phone and can pick up the bluetooth signal as the thief walks past your car. This tells him that a laptop is inside.......

[Darkshot]

DUDE!!! that awsome laptop you made and after all those hours of work?!?? wow sux to be u. now....what did little johnny learn todayyy? ;D my mom says that all the time (ma names not johnny i just like the name :] )

[douchrti]

Jeez, anyone knows you can open a combo lock easily if the last person to use it didnt turn the dial. How secure is that!

[glycerinate]

Good, I like it. But for major protection, use this. The laptop lock

[djb]

Try PointSEC -- http://www.pointsec.com/products/pc/. Supports Windows, Linux, removable storage devices, ... Pricey, perhaps, but you get what you pay for.

[Gunnar]

Is there a way to track a stolen laptop? I heard Dell puts some chip in laptops so they can monitor owners internet activities.

[kwacka]

See http://www.absolute.com/PDF/ComputraceCompleteDS.pdf

This company locates a stolen laptop when it connects to the internet, and informs the local police. They guarantee that if its not recovered within 60 days they pay out.

Can also wipe the harddirve remotely.

As you say, it can also monitor usage.

It is built into the BIOS of several manufacturers, and is activated when the company gets their cash.

No, I've got nothing to do with this company (they don't work with Linux-based machines).

[zephyr5208]

you can actually report the serial number and other id numbers to the local police, and there are also some web sites that offer insurance on the laptop to help pay for a new one if your current one is lost or damaged.

[_soapy_]

So is this really you posting this?!?!

Bad news, getting things stolen. At least you have a back-up, unlike most.

I use one of "Karen's power tools" (http://www.karenware.com/powertools/powertools.asp) which has the option to do pretty much any kind of back-up over a LAN or whatever, either to or from a machine, with timestamps, deletion detection, changes only, bitwise comparision, etc. all with a nice front-end. Very handy when added to your start-up folder.

Oh, and in the UK, to comply with the Data Protection Act you *must* take steps to ensure data is not lost or stolen. You can get in trouble even for simply deleting a file you shouldn't have! So back things up!

[mikesty]

Nice security work :) I am really sad to hear the squid laptop was stolen :( If I see someone running with it, I'll let them know of my presence about two seconds before I club them in the head.

[Junkyard John]

Peck their eyes out. LOL

[nospleen]

Very unfortunate...getting stuff stolen sucks...a lot. By the way, in your last sentence, you spelled "losing" as "loosing". Just thought I would point that out so I can include a story! A kid in my English class wrote a whole research paper worth five hundred points about different ways to lose weight. Unfortunately, he spelled "lose" as "loose", so he obviously got a lot of shit and a bad grade to go with it. Just thought that would make you feel a little better. I'm looking forward to working with you!

[ewilhelm]

While I realize a spell checker wouldn't have caught this, I did take this opportunity to finally install Spellbound.

[nospleen]

Oh ya, and he spelled it wrong throughout the whole paper!