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When Private Data Goes Walkies

- Wednesday, August 19, 2009Security

Do home users need crypto?

A recent burglary victim who lost a laptop, iPhone and various other gadgets, has been taunted by the thief posting messages on her Facebook account.

Victoria Richardson lost the laptop when her home was burgled, along with credit cards, money and other items. The ease with which the burglar accessed her account suggests minimal password protection (if any) was used to protect the laptop and its contents.

This recent incident underlines the need for home users to properly protect their systems, especially those such as laptops that are attractive to thieves both in and outside the home. Had the laptop been properly protected by full disk encryption the thief would have been unable to access the contents. Although this wouldn't stop them stealing the laptop, it would significantly reduce the distress caused to the victim. While a good password will make it harder to get into the machine, on an unencrypted system passwords can be easily bypassed using a boot CD.

A number of vendors offer cost effective commercial disk encryption products (PGP, Becrypt, Sophos, Checkpoint) and for more budget conscious home users, the free open source TrueCrypt is a good choice.

Of course encryption stops the thief getting at your data, but regular and secure backups are also important to ensure that you don't lose access to it in the event of theft, hardware or software failure.

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