I was thinking about what would happen if someone broke into our motorhome. All of our material possessions are adequately insured, and replaceable. The thing that worries me the most is my laptop. I have not given a lot of thought to security, but theft of the laptop would be a big problem, with all of the information that is on it. In particular, all of my passwords are in a file, somewhat hidden, but still accessable to a thief. Since we do online banking this presents a problem.

We do use common sense, the rig, storage compartments, toys, and all other outside items are kept locked. We are careful about where we park, but we do like to boondock. General security suggestions are welcome, but I am mostly concerned about the laptop at this point.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

It would help to know what operating system you are using. There are several products and settings that are different for each.

Many laptop and notebook computers have a place to connect a cable to lock around something to physically secure it but if anybody is determined to steal something they usually can. Would slow down grab and run though.

Tom,

The best way I have found to handle passwords - and we all have many of them, for various reasons - is to use ROBOfORM. You can get a free version of it that will handle 10 passwords. If you want to manage more, then you need to upgrade to the paid version. Money well spent, in my experience.

Roboform requires a login before it will fill in any of the passwords, and its files are encrypted. It will fill out forms for you and store credit card info. All encrypted.

Like a good hacker, if they want, they'll get it. But there are some products on the market that are supposed to "lock" your data either onto a hard drive, a USB hard drive or thumb-drive. We use a USB thumb-drive so the data is stored away from the PC and easily overlooked/concealed, also helps if you have a catastrophic failure (been here recently) and have to rebuild a system, all the info in one place with a minimum of keyboarding. We also keep selected serial numbers and product registration numbers on it.

Physical security, most have a locking point to attach a cable. As KRon said, would't stop a determined individual, but might prevent a snatch and grab run through. JMHO

Tom,
I understand your concern about your password file. Just burn it to a CD or thumbdrive as already suggested then wipe it from the hard drive. Keep it in a separate place.

However if the laptop were stolen, regardless of the inability to find your passwords are you also asking about saving your data like emails, favorites in your browser, abd all your programs as well?

If so you will need an external drive and a disk imaging program like Acronis which I use now.

An image is not like a data file back up, where if you lose the computer hard drive or the the computer itself where you have to spend days cleaning the new computer and doing updates for windows etc, and then spend days loading the programs all over again, and then you finally get around to reloading your saved data files, if you know where they belong in the hierarchy.

With an image, you can install a new hard drive, use the emergency disk you made with Acronis, and then in about 20-50 minutes your computer is exactly where it was when you made the last image. With the enterprise edition you can do a bare metal restore with completely different computers if the whole office burned to the ground.

So what really do you want to secure? The passwords are easy copy or do what Jack suggested.

If you want to secure the data then encrypt the hard drive. Programs available to do that, and no one shy of the NSA will be able to acess the data on your computer.

If you want to have the data and all programs if it is stolen then do a disk image weekly or daily. MY Acronis does background incrememental images daily and does not even slow me down noticeably while I work on other things. It does images of open files in use too.

But that also depends on the RAM, processor/s, and speed of your machine. If it is a low end laptop or pretty old then you might want to do images at night after you are done with it for the day.

Hope that helps!

Lots of newer gear allows you to protect the hard drive at the BIOS level with a password, that and a boot time BIOS password are very good security measures. They can also make it harder to sell your laptop or get it past security that wants to see it boot up.

Linux offers lots of great encryption options both at initial loading and for individual drive partitions. I'm getting ready for an airline trip (yuck) and will do an encrypted "home" partition for all of my data as the laptop is too old for the BIOS options.

It is also fairly easy to put all your personal info on a thumb drive or to put the whole operating system on one under Linux.

You can move your default data storage directory under Windows if I recall correctly.

On new Dells the following service is offered:
Computrace Theft Protection – Tracks stolen systems and remotely wipes sensitive data.

Thanks everyone for the quick responses. I haven't had time to study any of them in detail yet, but I realize I should have been more specific.

My operating system is Windows XP, although a new computer is probably not too far in the future (ugh). As you might have guessed, I am not really technically oriented as far as computers go. I am better with a wrench, so keep it simple.

The first concern that came to mind was the passwords. That sounds like it will be fairly easy to handle.

I don't have a huge amount of sensitive data/documents on the computer. What I do have could probably be moved to a flash drive and hidden/ locked up. Or, is there a relatively easy way that files/folders can be password protected?

I realize that if someone were really determined, they could probably defeat most anything I would implement. I guess I was mostly thinking to thwart the common thief, not necessarily a sophisticated hacker.

Thanks again for the responses!

Your posted question caught my eye because I've been following the saga of a couple who had their Mazatlan home broken into, and their laptop stolen along with other valuables. This morning, they reported that.... surprise of all surprises..... the local policia knocked on their door and handed them their laptop... seven weeks after their robbery! They had 'lojack' installed on the computer, and they had been getting 'updates' from the lojack folks, complete with addresses, etc, so they knew that the computer was being used, and it was definitely being tracked. I had never heard of Lojack before. Here's the address for more information:

http://www.lojackforlaptops.com/

Any of you know more about Lojack? Interesting concept.... I've wondered what I'd do if someone swiped my computer.... besides throw a tantrum and then buy a new laptop!!

Lee

Lee, Their car, motorcycle type stuff works great so I'd suspect their computer version would work well too. the only thing that has to happen is that the computer needs to go on-line to report the theft.

This is a cute idea for tracking a stolen laptop! :0

http://shadmia.com/2008/05/21/thieves-caught-by-stolen-laptop/

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/24/idiot-criminal-uploa.html

LEE: LOJACK came free, with a three year subscription, along with my new Dell Inspiron 1720. I've had the computer for about a month now. . . haven't had to use the Lojack yet, fortunately. As always, oRV

Now that I've had a chance to read up on Lojack, I understand what it is, and it sounds like a good idea to me. Especially if it comes free with a computer! I'm following the ongoing saga of this couple's home invasion robbery here in Mazatlan, and checking frequently for the next installment on the "What's Up Maz" forum. Not only did they eventually get their computer returned to them, but they taught the local police dept, district attorney's office, and the cable company a real lesson in modern technology, to say nothing of the lesson learned by the thieves! The fella is writing installments as he has time, and I think that everyone in town is following the story! I feel really secure here in my home, which is well-designed and protected by strong locks, so don't have much fear of anyone getting inside unless I open the door, but these people hadn't figured out yet that the 'design element' called 'protecciones' have a dual purpose; security and design. I think they have the idea now!!

If all you want to do is copy certain files to a thumb drive, use MS's SyncToy or a "free for personal use" sync tool like this:
http://allwaysync.com/
can automatically back up any files or folders only extracting the new and changed files keeping your thumbdrive up to date much faster than drag and drop.

Here's MS's SyncToy download site also free:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyi...06EB7&displaylang=en

These are surprisngly fast and easy to use.