If your laptop is stolen from your car or hotel room there is usually
nothing to stop the thief from
removing your hard drive and attaching it to another computer. Doing this bypasses any account
password protection and allows them to access your data easily.
The best way to prevent this is to encrypt your laptop's hard drives. Encrypted drives can only be
accessed after the encryption key is supplied - usually in the form of a PIN, a password or by
inserting a USB stick containing the key.
You can encrypt an entire drive using BitLocker, an encryption utility included with some versions
of
Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. A free, open source alternative is TrueCrypt, which also
works with Windows XP, Linux and OS X.
removing your hard drive and attaching it to another computer. Doing this bypasses any account
password protection and allows them to access your data easily.
The best way to prevent this is to encrypt your laptop's hard drives. Encrypted drives can only be
accessed after the encryption key is supplied - usually in the form of a PIN, a password or by
inserting a USB stick containing the key.
You can encrypt an entire drive using BitLocker, an encryption utility included with some versions
of
Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. A free, open source alternative is TrueCrypt, which also
works with Windows XP, Linux and OS X.
