Laptop Encryption

To err is human, to not leak confidential information is divine.

With the likes of HSBC and HMRC announcing embarrassing losses of confidential and personally identifiable information it may seem that not even the big players appear to be that bothered when it comes to protecting our data.

However, handling sensitive information is very risky indeed and securing it is the difference between losing a laptop, and losing your credibility.

Imagine that you've left your laptop on a train or a bus, the prospect of writing to every client to inform them of a data breach is daunting enough, without having to also add that you took no steps to prevent someone accessing that data.

Securing data is all about balance. The most secure way to store information could well be to store it under armed guard in a nuclear proof vault with guard towers, however it makes accessing the information alot less convenient than storing it on the usb stick attached to your car keys, and how many times have you lost them!

There are various arguments for using full disk encryption and there are various arguments for using partial disk encryption and we tend to implement both depending on the kind of environment you work in.

Successful computer security relies on user discipline, there's no point installing a fort-knox deluxe blast door at home only to leave the key in the lock is there?!

Full Disk Encryption

Full disk encryption is the most user friendly. On system boot the user is asked for a password which decrypts the encrypted drive on the fly. The user hardly has to know the disk is encrypted except for entering the password at switch-on. However, once the computer is powered down, the data is scrambled.

The downside is that if the user were to leave the system booted and unattended without first locking the computer, anyone could come along and read the data, but this comes down to user discipline as mentioned earlier.

This is by far the best solution if you are simply wishing to protect data on your laptop.

What about Back-Up?

Encrypting your data means that in the event of a hard disk failure in your system it will be impossible to recover your data, that's the point of it after-all. It is therefore imperative that secure and reliable backups are taken of your data.

Our backup service, theonlinesafe.co.uk is perfect for backing up laptops, even when you're out of the office.