Go Ahead – Steal My Laptop

Posted on 12. Aug, 2009 by Jay OHare in Popular, Tech

Things would be ok if you stole my laptop. Yeah, it would be a pain in the butt, I’d have to get a new one & restore backups but I wouldn’t be worried about identity theft and I wouldn’t worry about client’s information getting into the wrong hands. It’s not that I don’t care it’s that I’ve taken steps to ensure that if my computer is stolen there won’t be an identity theft problem.

Steamboat School District

The recent theft of a laptop from the school district finance administrator really brings home how vulnerable we all are. Since my wife works for the school district we are now having to implement identity theft protection. Yeah the school is paying for it for a year but its still a pain. All they had to do was take a few simple, free measures and this could have been avoided.

So what would it mean to you if your laptop/computer were stolen? How much client data (contracts, social security#’s, financial data) would be at risk? Could you imagine the phone call to ALL your clients to tell them that their identity may be compromised because your laptop was stolen? How’d that be for your reputation?

With increased mobility we are at a much higher risk of theft  and therefore have an increased responsibility to protect the data and information of our clients, contacts & families. The good news is that it’s very easy and free. In today’s world you have to encrypt sensitive data on your computers. Period, no exceptions.

You have to encrypt sensitive data on your computers. Period, no exceptions.

The Windows login password is NOT encryption. When someone steals your laptop they simply remove the hard drive, put it in a USB enclosure, plug it into their computer and they have total access to ALL your data. So here’s a quick tutorial on how to secure data on Windows.

First you need to decide what need to be secured. Here’s a few things to think about at a minimum:

• Financial information of any kind – credit info, SSN, bank records, Quickbooks, etc
• Confidential client information
• Business plans & other sensitive proprietary information
• Email – especially if you email sensitive information (which you should not do unencrypted)

Second, you need to create a secure place on your hard drive to store all this data. This is called a “virtual drive” or “volume.” So just like you have a “C:” drive (in windows) encryption software creates and encrypted container and when given the correct password will mount as a drive that can store all your sensitive data. There are a lot of encryption programs to do this and if you’re in Windows I recommend TrueCrypt. It’s FREE, easy to use and has a strong community that keeps it up to date. Macs have built in encryption that can do the same thing (yay Mac!).

How to Install (Windows)

Ok, this may look like  lot of steps but it will take you less than 15 minutes to do. First, download and install TrueCrypt from

www.truecrypt.org.

Then you need to set up the container for the virtual drive. You’ll need to figure out how big it needs to be and that will depend on how much data you have. In this example we’ll make a 1 gig encrypted drive which is really small. You’ll probably want to make some thing on the order of 10gig or more.

So start TrueCrypt and select “Create Volume.” The volume is going to be our protected container to store the sensitive stuff.

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Next we want to create a “Standard Volume:”

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Ok, now we have to create the file name. This is kind of confusing because Truecrypt says “Select File.” Actually you just need to browse to the place on your hard drive where you want the file to be. Keep in mind you’ll need to find a place that has enough room for the file. In this example, we’ll use the c: drive.

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As you can see, I called the file “MySensitiveData” with no file extension. and it’s in the root of C:

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On the next screen you can simply accept the default encryption method. Click Next.

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Now you need to specify the size of your encrypted drive. For this example we’ll use 1gig. 1000 mb = 1gig do we’ll put in 1000 and select the mb size. If you wanted a 15gig  drive you’d need to put in 15 thousand mb or 15000. Click next.

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Carefully read the info for the password and be sure to choose a secure password. Enter the password twice then click next.

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On the next screen you’ll have to choose the file system. I’d recommend NTFS because it can hold larger files than FAT. In this example we’ll choose FAT. Then click “Format”

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Depending on how big your volume will be this will take some time to create.

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You’ll finally get the confirmation screen that your volume has been created. Click “Exit.”

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OK, now we have to mount the drive. In other words we have to get Windows to recognize the drive and give us access its contents. So we go back to the main TrueCrypt screen and select the file we just created.

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Enter the password and select a drive letter from the list. It can be any drive letter but I tend to choose a letter that’s “M” or higher. That way it’s less likely to conflict with other devices I might add later like another external drive. In this example I choose “O:”

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If you now open Windows Explorer you’ll see the drive is there and ready.

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Ok, now to make life easy, we want this drive to mount automatically every time we start windows. When windows starts the only thing we’ll need to do is enter the password. This is what keeps the bad guys out & our data safe. So, click on the volume we just created and from the “Volume” menu above click “Save Current Volume as Favorite.”

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Now select Tools-then settings and make sure you have the boxes checked just like the screenshot:

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You’re now done creating the encrypted volume. Now move your sensitive files to the drive and you’ll be set. If you want to move your email to the drive you’ll need to move the email DB and  update your email program to point to the new location. Be sure to update your backup program to include the files in the new drive. Next time you start Windows you’ll be asked to enter a password and the drive will automatically mount. One note of caution: You should give someone else you trust the password or store it in a safe place that can be found if something should happen to you. This data is locked down and can never be retrieved if something happens to you and no one else has access to the password.

Related posts:

1. How I’ll Hack Your Weak Password
2. Love Your Email Again – For MS Outlook Users
3. Do the World and Yourself a Favor

Tags: a lot of encryption, bank records, encryption, encryption software, finance, Mac, Microsoft Windows