How to secure a Laptop from thieves

Laptops are becoming more and more popular as they replace the standard desktop computer. As the numbers in laptop sales grow numbers of notebook theft also increase dramatically and exponentially. The Laptop loss is not limited to its cost but it also includes the loss of sensitive and creative information in it. This data could be your important documents, presentations, credit card details or maybe financial information.

How to secure your laptop

So given the risk of laptop theft and the potential losses that laptop theft can cause, following points can be implemented by individuals and organizations to prevent it.

· Make sure you are connecting to the right network

· Secure your connection

· What’s the frequency

· Turn off your wireless network adapter when you are not used your laptop

· Use whole disk encryption on your laptop

· Make sure you have a firewall and it is running

· Public Hotspot

Make sure you are connecting to the right network

The issue is that your laptop is set up to automatically connect to a particular access point’s Service Set Identifier (SSID) – so someone who uses a common name can grab a bunch of users who aren’t wary. There are also tools that an attacker can use to disconnect users from the right access point and have them then connect to his rogue network.

There are several steps that you can take, including disabling automatic connections and using a unique name for your home network. Go to your Wireless Networks panel, click the “Advanced” button and then uncheck “Automatically connect to non-preferred networks” and check “Access point (infrastructure) networks only.

Secure your connection

Make sure your home wireless network is secured with WPA2 encryption, if you can. This is the strongest encryption method, To set up WPA2 once you have installed the patch, bring up the wireless network properties sheet and choose WPA2-PSK from the pull-down menu.

If you can’t run WPA2 on all of your home machines, then consider some other encryption method – anything is better than nothing. (“Open” in the screen shot below means you aren’t running with any encryption.) When you are on the road, if you have a choice, choose the wireless network that is encrypted if you have the appropriate access and a password.

What’s the frequency?

Every wireless adapter comes with monitoring software, but sometimes you have to look around your hard disk to find it. Which channel our wireless network is broadcasting on, along with other information such as the kind of encryption being used and the MAC address of the access point itself.

Turn off your wireless network adapter when you are not using your laptop

Turn off any Windows file shares when you travel. To do this, go to your wireless connection’s Properties panel and make sure that “Client for Microsoft Networks” and “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks” are both unchecked.

Use whole disk encryption on your laptop.

And think about using a better protection scheme for your USB thumb drives, too. You never know when someone will steal your data or break into your car or hotel room and lift the laptop. Use like PGP Disk and use a security cable when you leave your laptop for some times.

Make sure you have a firewall and it is running.

There are number of different programs that will protect your laptop, including Client Firewall. You need to use them if you don’t want to catch any infections when you are out on the road.

Public Hotspot

Before you accept, make sure you first understand what you are accepting. Don’t log on to a public hotspot that presents you with an invalid certificate, and know when to expect the certificate in the logon process. You can use hotspot shield while browsing internet in public hotspot like starbucks, airport, et cetera.

Laptop Security Technologies

Within the much broader arena of IT security, there are five classes of technology that are relevant to laptops because they protect against the risks. These are as follow

· User Authentication

· Physical Locking Devices

· Encryption

· Monitoring & Tracing Software

· Alarms System

User Authentication

User authentication (verifying the identity and authorization of the user) is a required component of all security systems. It has often been written that authentication can be done three ways

· By something the user knows (e.g., a password),

· By something the user has (e.g., a token or card), and/or

· By a personal feature of the user (e.g., fingerprint)

Combining two or more methods enhances the confidence level. This is common in situations where high levels of security are required. The most common approaches to user authentication are – password systems, smart cards and tokens, and biometrics.

Physical Locking Devices

According to a survey, two of every five laptop thefts occur from within. Because of this, many companies adopt increased building security (guards, gates, badges & video systems) as a means of reducing laptop theft.

Also in fairly widespread use are physical locking devices, e.g., Cable locks, Docking stations and lockdown enclosures. Devices such as cable locks are generally inexpensive, and they are good deterrents.

Encryption

User authentication systems prevent unauthorized access to the laptop’s operating system. However, if the hard drive is removed to another machine, or if boot-up from a floppy disc is enabled in the stolen machine, the files can be accessed. Unless a hard drive lock option is available and implemented, the only way to protect files from this type of attack is to encrypt them.

Encryption systems require the use of a digital key to encrypt and decrypt the data. In “symmetric” systems, the same key is used for both encryption and decryption.

In PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)-based applications, asymmetric encryption is used, with two keys: a public key for encryption and a private key for decryption.

Monitoring & Tracing Software

Monitoring and tracing software keeps track of the location of the laptop and, if it is stolen, assists in its recovery. These products work by making a call into a monitoring service regularly when the laptop is logged onto the internet. If the laptop has been reported stolen, the service activates a caller-ID system, identifies the IP address of the computer, and notifies authorities.

The major disadvantage that a stolen computer that is not logged onto the internet will not get recovered. Another disadvantage is that tracking down the physical location of a computer from an IP address can be quite difficult and time-consuming.

Some software offer features for retrieving, encrypting and erasing files on the stolen laptop once it is logged onto the internet. Of course, such files would be accessible to the thief up to that point.

Alarm Systems

Now that your laptop is physically secured with a notebook computer lock you should make it theft-proof on the software side. There are lots of programs out there that transform your machine into a fully-blown alarm system. Some programs use your laptop’s built-in motion detector to know when your notebook is moved. Others blare your gadget’s horns when the power cord or a USB device is unplugged.

Laptop Alarm is windows utility that will even capture the photograph of the thief using the inbuilt webcam and send it to any email address. Just make sure these screaming alarms don’t ring inadvertently else that can put you in an embarrassing situation. Three aspects should be considered for securing a laptop -

1. Physical Security.

2. Security Software.

3. Security Consciousness.

Bitlocker Hard Drive Encryption

Modern computers ship with their own encryption tools. Microsoft bundles Bitlocker Drive Encryption on certain versions of Windows Vista.

BitLocker is utility in Windows Vista that encrypts the contents of the hard disk. At startup, the drive must be unlocked by typing in a password or inserting a USB flash drive that contains the password. If a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip is on the motherboard, BitLocker uses it to generate keys based on system files. If any of these files have changed, BitLocker keeps the data encrypted.

BitLocker is an operating system-level extension to Vista that combines on-disk encryption and special key management techniques. The data and the operating system installation are both protected by two-factor authentication, specifically, a hardware key used in conjunction with a long passphrase.

TPM (Trusted Platform Module) is security chip from the trusted computing group that is typically built into the motherboard of your laptop. It provides secure key generation by generating a private key that is stored in the chip and cannot be divulged to hackers.

If you need more sophisticated options, PGP Disk and TrueCrypt lead a largely capable pack of hard drive encryption options.

· Encrypting File System (EFS)

The reality of lost laptops with confidential & private data has begun to set in. With Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista, Microsoft offers a nifty feature to encrypt files or folders using Encrypting File System.

Here’s how to encrypt your files or folders.

Select the file or folder you want to encrypt. Right click on the folder and select Properties. On the General tab, click on Advanced. Check the box that says Encrypt contents to secure data, then click OK
Select Encrypt the file and the parent folder in the Encryption Warning dialog window.
All files created in the encrypted folder will now be automatically encrypted. Be sure to click OK when you’re done.
If you encrypt a folder instead of a single file, you can also choose to encrypt all the contents of the folder. Simply click the Apply changes to this folder, subfolders and files checkbox and click OK.

Note: Files or folders that are compressed cannot be encrypted. If you encrypt a compressed file or folder, that file or folder will be uncompressed. If you choose to encrypt a single file, you can opt to encrypt the folder that contains it.

Here’s how to decrypt your files or folders.

Select the file or folder that you want to decrypt, then right click and select Properties
From the General tab, select Advanced. Be sure to uncheck the Encrypt contents to secure data check box.

Note: If you choose to decrypt the folder only, the files and subfolders within the folder remain encrypted. However, when you add new files and subfolders to the folder, they will not be automatically encrypted.

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