What Must I Have to do True Mobile Computing? - Part 4
Posted by Daryl Rinaldi on Fri, Mar 26, 2010 @ 08:04 AM
Mobile Computing Security:
Security while traveling is a whole topic in and of itself. So let me just add these comments for now and we will address mobile computing security more in depth in a later post.
- Keep your laptop with you or clearly in sight at ALL times. Did you know according to a recent study by Dell and the Poneman Institute that up to 12,000 laptops are lost or stolen in U.S. airports each week? And that between 65 and 70 percent of lost laptops are never reclaimed.
- Bring a laptop lock that physically secures your laptop
- Have a strong password. Won't you feel foolish when someone steals your laptop and you tell the boss that your password was "password"?
- Encrypt your laptop hard drive. You may need an IT person to do this for you but it is not very difficult or expensive. And it just requires you to enter an extra password on startup. If someone steals your laptop they cannot read the data on the hard drive without your encryption password. Of course if you make your encryption password or your login password easy to guess/crack then it doesn't matter anyway.
- Consider Computrace which allows you to track a stolen laptop and remotely wipe the hard disk of ALL data.
PS. One last piece of advice regarding email is be sure you know how to access your email from the web (and have done it successfully) before you go. If you find yourself for whatever reason unable to use your PC or PDA to check or send email you'll feel good knowing that you can log in on any internet-connected PC and check your email.
Thanks for listening. Hope this was helpful. As always call or email me with questions, comments, etc. Road warriors what have I missed? Come on add some comments and tell me how YOU ensure you can stay productive on the road. What about any special PDA apps that help you? Please comment!