Securing Your Laptop

I wanted to provide some simple tips that would allow you to secure your laptop that goes beyond the obvious physical security. It is quite possible that your laptop sits at work where you feel it is secure, but it is more likely that you travel with your laptop and take it with you wherever you go.

Today, no matter the operating system you use, there are tools integrated with your laptop and many more tools that are available free of charge on the internet that can increase the security of your laptop. I wanted to take this time to introduce you to some of these tools and how they can be best used.

1. Use your BIOS settings to Disable booting your machine using a USB or a CD/DVD. What does this mean? Well, in simple terms, your system BIOS can dictate many aspects of how your system's hardware behaves and one of the important components of BIOS settings is allowing your machine to be started or restarted using a USB (externally connected on your laptop) or a CD/DVD drive. You can enter your BIOS settings by restarting your machine, pressing a key (such as F2, F10, etc.) during the bootup process, and changing the setting. You can also assign a BIOS password so that an unauthorized user cannot enter the BIOS setting and change your system's' behavior without your permission.

2. Encrypting all of your drives, whether it's a hard drive or a USB (flash/thumb) drive, is a practice that many organizations employ to secure their data, but it is something that is rarely used on personal laptops. If you are separated from your laptop, and someone manages to gain access to your hard drive, what is going to prevent them from putting that hard drive into their own machine and accessing your data? If there is any personal data on your hard drive you wish to protect, you should definitely encrypt your hard drive. Tools such as Bitlocker Drive Encryption (BDE) in Windows and freely available tool for other operating systems including Mac OS X is calledTrueCrypt can help accomplish drive security.

3. Use and frequently change Complex Password for all of your applications and to your laptop. Complex password implies that you have a password that is a minimum of 8 characters in length, contains at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, a number, a symbol, and does not contain a dictionary word. So, instead of using 'ComplexPassword' you would change it to 'C0mpl3xP@ssw0rd!' and by doing so, you would make it monumentally more difficult for a password cracking system to unlock your computer and the sensitive documents on it. You can go to many websites that will generate a complex password for you. Websites such as Strong Password Generator will do just that.

4. If you travel for work and are often in hotels or other insecure locations, you should think about investing in a Travel Router that will secure all of the traffic that is going to and from your machine. If you have a mobile phone with a data plan that will support your normal network usage, use your phone as a mobile hotspot instead of a public hotspot. Be warned that if your data plan on your mobile phone is not high enough you will end up paying immense fees on data overage charges. Study your plan carefully before you decide to use your mobile hotspot to connect your laptop and stream any type of data. Mobile hotspots are perfectly fine to send and receive emails along with browsing the web.

5. If you travel a great deal and are at airports all over the world as I am, you may want to invest in an inexpensive device that will send an alert to your mobile phone if you have moved more than a few feet away from your laptop. Examples of such devices include Kensington Proximo or a hipKey from Hippih.

I hope that this article has made you aware of what is available for you to help secure your laptop. 

Until next time, this is Rafiq Wayani signing out!