Secure Your Laptop Using Free Laptop Alarm

August 29, 2008 · Filed Under Gadgets, Laptops, Software, security · Comment 

If you frequently use your laptop in places where your attention is likely to be distracted away from it, installing Laptop Alarm is a good way to deter would be thieves. Now, you’ll never have to worry leaving your laptop behind when you need a quick break or a refill of your favorite coffee.

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Securing Your Laptop Data: A Modern Day Guide

July 8, 2008 · Filed Under Laptops, Miscellaneous tips, security · 3 Comments 

Scouring through several online guides on how to secure our laptop data, most were to advice laptop users to use password protection and encryption for their documents and files in order to lock down the contents of their laptop hardrive. While this is an effective scheme in the past, modern times have made these methods rather obsolete. Password protection and encryption can be easily overriden by various tools that can be easily obtained from the Internet. Even hardrive passwords can be unlocked with relative ease nowadays.

Due to a recent report by Dell and Ponemon Institute that up to 12,000 laptops are lost in US Airports weekly, securing the content of our laptops is a must if we don’t want our confidential and sensitive documents falling into the wrong hands if ever our laptops gets lost or stolen. Never mind the laptop, mind your data.

So, what’s the modern way to secure your laptop data? A very simple and straightforward solution is by having no data stored in your laptop. Yes, you heard it right. In simple terms, do not save your sensitive documents in your hardrive, not even in a thumbdrive, since that also gets lost very easily.

Theory:

In this age of Wifi and Broadband Internet connectivity, you can always have access to your documents online, anytime, anywhere.

How to Do It:

First of all, you can always leverage the power of Google docs to save your documents online and never on your laptop.

For Microsoft Office corporate users, you can leave your documents stored in your office computers then connect via VPN to edit them, saving confidential documents in their original location. If your laptop is your main office gear then open your document remotely but save the document in your corporate server instead.

Also, never tick any password checkbox to save your passwords, even on a private computer. This might be a little inconvenient but that’s the way to be secured nowadays. Do not save your password for your email account, instant messaging and social networking accounts as these can be easily exploited once they fell into the wrong hands.

Conclusion:

I’m sure with these simple steps, you can save yourself some trouble in the unfortunate event that you lose your laptop. But don’t wait until it’s too late. Backup remotely, and backup often.

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