If you keep abreast of news and current affairs you cannot have escaped from seeing the recent spate of new stories concerning the loss, or theft, of high profile laptop computers.
The ubiquitous laptop computer has become an essential tool that offers homeworkers and telecommuters the freedom they require to carry out their jobs outside the office environment. This brings tremendous benefits, but it also means the laptop, together with any sensitive data stored on it, may be routinely passing through public areas such as railway stations and airports or is being left unattended in cars, hotel rooms or at home.

The security of these computers has become a major focus for government departments. Today, even the average specification laptop PC provides the ability to store huge amounts of data, and as a result thousands of documents, reports, letters and emails may be held on a single laptop. Not surprising government departments have a difficult challenge balancing the needs of laptop users in the 21st century with the security of their data.

One method of securing your sensitive data is to encrypt the hard disk. Ideally this should be automated as even the most diligent telecommuter can forget to encrypt a sensitive file. Most encryption algorithms in use today are extremely strong and the possibility of breaking the algorithm itself is very remote. Any encryption process however is only as strong as the weakest link, therefore care should be taken to choose a product that not only uses a strong encryption algorithm but also provides strong and secure access control.

Other laptop security solutions?
There are hardware-based disk encryption device that combine a hard disk with a secure cryptographic module thus providing a single package that fits most standard laptop PC's. This hardware encrypts the entire disk, including the areas that many other products leave in the clear such as the boot sector, swap files and other temporary files. This encryption process is completely invisible to users; so reducing the need to store sensitive documents in a special folder or to manually encrypt each file in turn. A two stage access control system prevents unauthorised access by using a strong government approved password and a state of the art RF based smart card token which requires no smart card reader or additional hardware.