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Your Laptop Was Just Stolen - Did You
Protect Your Data?
Many executives own laptops and travel with them. They also
carry with them, more often than not, a false sense of security that
the data is protected by the windows logon. They think to
themselves, "No one except my IT Manager can get to my data because
you have to have a username and password to logon to my laptop."
Too bad the Windows logon provides absolutely NO protection. But
how can that be?
MICROSOFT'S ILLUSION OF SECURITY:
To prevent people from logging onto computers, Microsoft provides the
Windows login screen. Depending upon the configuration of your
machine, that might require you to click an icon at the User Welcome
screen in Windows XP or perhaps you press the ctrl-alt-del key
combination to reveal the login dialog box. If you work at a
company and connect to a network, then you are probably most familiar
with the ctrl-alt-del key combination. The method does not
matter, the fact remains that this "login" does very little to protect
the data that is physically stored on your computer.
THE ILLUSION FADES AWAY:
So you have your laptop protected by a username and password, but I am
telling you that you are living a lie. It takes me usually less
than 5 minutes to gain complete and full access to every file on most
any laptop. Depending on the model of laptop, I can accomplish
the task in less than 15 seconds without even turning on your laptop.
"Oh s##t," you say?
A SIMPLE SCENARIO:
Let's say I've been asked into Company Big by Mike, the CEO. He
has just fired their IT manager, but he needs immediate access to
files on the departing IT Manager's laptop immediately. In this
case, the IT Manager was doing several unethical things and his laptop
is setup to only allow logon using special username and password.
Fortunately, like more than 99% of the computer user population, this
IT manager did not use any encryption methods (more on that later).
So how do I gain immediate access if I don't know the password and
worse, have no idea what username the IT manager was using?
HOW TO ACCESS ANY HARD DRIVE:
If you shop at CompUSA (one of my personal favorites), you can
purchase for yourself an external USB hard drive enclosure that will
fit a laptop hard drive. The cost of the product is $30, the
ability for me to gain access in seconds -- priceless. Step 1:
remove hard drive from laptop. Step 2: insert hard drive into my
external USB hard drive enclosure. Step 3: connect USB enclosure
to my laptop. Step 4: browse for the files needed by the CEO on
the departing IT Manager's laptop hard drive. Did you notice
that I never even had to turn on the IT Manager's hard drive. YOUR
LAPTOP IS STOLEN:
If having your laptop stolen sounds like your worst nightmare, then
you are correct. The physical theft of a laptop can be
devastating depending on the sensitive nature of information you have
stored on it. For companies, it can mean the loss of customers,
employees, reputation, or worse. When discussing security of
laptops, I want everyone to treat that laptop just like your wallet
with everything written our for a potential thief. If you wallet
is stolen, usually that just means your credit cards are taken and you
call someone to cancel them. But so many people carry personal
and private information and documents on their laptops that includes,
social security numbers, dates of birth, genealogy information, and
passwords to online accounts. PROTECT THE FILES AND HERE IS HOW:
There is only one way to protect files stored on your laptop: use an
encryption tool. That sounds easy, right? Unfortunately, I
have only met a very small number of computer users in the hundreds of
customers and colleagues I have worked with internationally that
actually uses encryption software. |
