Category: 
One of customers called me today. He was really nervous. Actually he sounded scared. From a long and rather confused conversation I have managed to understand what the problem was - one of his clerks lost his laptop. It is funny that a couple of weeks ago we’ve wrote about lost and stolen laptops.
Today’s situation was really critical. There was some extremely confidential information there. A kind of information that could cost my client few million dollars if competitors or even journalists discover it. This employee was lucky. He simply forgot his bag in the restaurant. He was a frequent visitor of this place and the owner of the restaurant accidentally new his phone number. So, the clerk got his laptop back after a couple of hours. Because there was no damage the employer decided not to bring a suit against him. He was simply fired. I’ve got a new order. My client decided to protect all of his laptops. Happy end!
But let me ask you - why does everybody need to feel a pain in his own back before he starts acting? Why do you wait till the last moment?
There are few inexpensive or even free and working solutions. I usually recommend my customers one of these:
TrueCrypt - open source free tool for freaks
PGP - ultimate solution for any size corporation
You
Dear reader, do not wait till it happen to you, pleas follow these recommendations
1. Encrypt your data locally.
2. Backup and encrypt. When did you backed-up your data last time? Do you encrypt while backing-up?
3. Encrypt your laptops. You can leave system partition unencrypted, but keep all your information on the encrypted one.
4. Encrypt portable media, at least important files that you store on the flash drive
5. Encrypt mail attachments, IM messages, phone talks. This is not paranoia, we are listened watched and read…
You may use any software or hardware solution, but please encrypt. Otherwise some other blogger will write your story, and this time it may end not that happily.
