It would be naive to think that in today’s times it’s easy to live without laptops. With the kind of portability it offers, everyone from a student to a CEO of a company carries a laptop. Various laptops models and series with different features are offered by Dell and other laptops makers. In short any place you are in, you are bound to spot a laptop. So it comes as no surprise when we hear news about lost laptops. And this sadly can happen to anyone. The main concern here is the sensitive information stored in this portable device. Thus it becomes imperative on our part to take care of the data our laptop carries.
Being so handy makes laptop a soft target for thieves. But once you lose sight of your laptop the next immediate thing to hit your brain is the accounts file you were working on or the confidential data that you had left as a draft mail, sales figures or that crisp business plan you were going to propose. Anyone will get terrified at the mere thought of these problems. But there lies a solution.
Let us begin with some basic settings on your laptop. Make your laptop is password protected. No one can access information on your laptop unless they know the password. A strong password is a must. You must take backup of all relevant information from time to time. Once the data has been transferred to a secure drive, you can delete it from your machine. Don’t forget to turn on the firewall on your laptop. You must try to avoid accessing sensitive information when using a free Wi-Fi. It can be dangerous!
Most people even after ensuring that these settings are in place lose their important data. For that extra level of security to avoid data theft, you can download software like TrueCrypt. This free to download open source software goes a long way to save your confidential data. All you need to do is to install it on your machine, make a folder and choose its size. Then mount it on a drive and give it a password. Save all your data in this folder and share the password only if necessary.
Another open source protection system for your laptop is Prey. You just need to install this software on your machine and relax. Whenever the thief logs into a network, you will be notified and the IP address tracked. That’s it! Your perpetrator can be nabbed. Windows laptop comes with an encryption solution in the form of BitLocker. Once you initiate it your entire drive will be encrypted.
We know that laptops have become a necessary and common gadget. Thus the threat on it is equally common. With so many solutions in sight you must not fear losing the important and sensitive data. Install the basics and ponder about the security software discussed. But nonetheless the best possible way to save the data is to save the laptop itself. If we can be a little more aware and responsible, we might avoid the day of worrying about data theft.
