How to Protect Your Precious PC Data: From Physical Security to Encryption
As more people use laptops as their primary computers and other portable devices to store information, the chance of data being lost or stolen increases. A recent CSI/FBI survey of IT administrators found that 46 percent of respondents had incidents of stolen laptops in 2006, with an average cost of $30,057 per respondent, an increase from the average cost in 2005 of $19,562. Aside from locking laptops down with cables, there are other security measures to prevent data loss should a laptop be stolen. U3 smart drives, an emerging standard for USB flash drives that comes with automatic password protection, or USB drives with built in fingerprint scanners. Another option is an "auto destruct" service that sends a special code over the Internet to a stolen laptop that transfers all data back to a secure location and then erases it from the stolen machine. Encryption is also a strong solution to protect data when a machine is stolen, but encryption can be expensive and difficult to maintain.
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