Mike Foster's IT Security and Best Practices Blog » full-disc encryption security http://www.fosterinstitute.com/blog Thu, 12 Jan 2012 04:00:36 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= 2006-2007 mike@fosterinstitute.com (Mike Foster's IT Security and Best Practices Blog) mike@fosterinstitute.com (Mike Foster's IT Security and Best Practices Blog) http://www.fosterinstitute.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/powered_by_podpress.jpg Mike Foster's IT Security and Best Practices Blog http://www.fosterinstitute.com/blog 144 144 Mike Foster's IT Security and Best Practices Blog Mike Foster's IT Security and Best Practices Blog mike@fosterinstitute.com no no What to do if someone steals your identity http://www.fosterinstitute.com/blog/identity/ http://www.fosterinstitute.com/blog/identity/#comments Thu, 25 Mar 2010 04:00:44 +0000 Mike Foster http://www.fosterinstitute.com/blog/?p=456 A client wrote recently explaining their family’s personal information was on a laptop in their car when the car was stolen. Of course, the laptop was not using full disk encryption, or they would never have called me. What do you do?

First of all, read this short blog post about full disk encryption:
http://www.fosterinstitute.com/blog/laptop-data.html.

Next, if you haven’t already, notify at least one of these agencies:

I’d suggest you consider signing up with one of them for their monitoring service such as Equifax ID Patrol or Experian ProtectMyID.

The other main step I would take is to log into your banking sites and set up “alerts” that send you a text message or e-mail you DAILY a message of all charges and other activity on the account. Some banks even allow alerts in real time as the activity occurs. That way you can keep a really close eye on things and, if anything looks out of the ordinary, call your bank ASAP.

If you are protecting any of your accounts with a “mother’s maiden name” as a secret word for when you phone in, change that code too—it is too easy to figure out.

The FTC offers even more detailed advice here:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/idtheft/idt07.shtm.

]]> http://www.fosterinstitute.com/blog/identity/feed/ 0 Are You Looking for Security That’s Fast, Cheap, and Easy? http://www.fosterinstitute.com/blog/fast-security/ http://www.fosterinstitute.com/blog/fast-security/#comments Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:20:45 +0000 Mike Foster http://www.fosterinstitute.com/blog/today%e2%80%99s-full-disc-encryption-safe-fast-cheap-and-easy-to-use.html Quite simply, full-disc encryption means everything on your drive is safe and secure from being accessed by unauthorized people. Many people say they don’t use full-disk encryption tools because they think it’s expensive. Well, it’s not expensive at all. I have full-disk encryption that came included for free with my laptop. Some people also believe that security is very difficult to configure. No. Enabling full-disk encryption only adds about 45 seconds to your computer’s setup once the IT professional knows the procedure. It’s very easy.

Other people say once you use full-disk encryption, it becomes almost impossible for the end user to use the computer. That was true at one point, but today, if I want to lock my laptop, all I have to do is use the Windows L key combination and the computer locks, or I can just set the computer to lock automatically if I walk away for very long. Then whenever I want to get back in, I can take any one of my 10 fingers and swipe it across the fingerprint reader that is on the front of the laptop. Now I’m ready to go again and can access all the data on the system.

People also tell me that encryption is slow. It’s not. I use my laptop to run large and involved programs all the time, so I need speed. And I have overkill encryption on my machine just to prove to audiences how fast it is. I have my data locked or encrypted three different ways, and it only needs to be encrypted once. This is to demonstrate the speed.

So in a nutshell, full-disk encryption security is inexpensive, it’s easy for the user, it’s very important to have, and it’s easy for your IT administrators, too. So it’s time to be secure, and full-disk encryption is a great start to having some peace of mind.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

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