If the physical security for your computer was bypassed, cut, picked or you didn’t think you needed it and your laptop is gone. The next level of security is putting a password on your BIOS.

BIOS Passwords

When your computer is first turned on or restarted it goes through what’s called the POST – Power On Self Test. While your RAM and other things are tested, you may see instructions on what key to press to enter the BIOS settings. Computer manufactures have their own unique key combination and key to enter the BIOS aren’t on the screen, here’s a list of possibilities by manufacturer. If you don’t know what your doing this could be a dangerous area to start changing things, so just enter a password, save and exit.

Make this password easy for you to remember. If you forget this password depending on the computer (actually the motherboard / bios maker) it could be something you will need to have professionally recovered.  Toshiba laptops have  a separate security chip that can only be professionally replaced. Others can be reset by a jumper on the motherboard or taking out the CMOS battery, it just depends.

Windows Passwords

Basically a waste of time. If you want your XP to automatically logon or no password at all, there are a couple of ways to do it. You probably should have some sort of Windows password but it’s too easy to crack to put too much faith into it. Google cracking windows passwords and there are free utilities and even keyboard combinations that will crack or bypass Windows passwords easily.

If your computer is stolen, your main concern is keeping the thieves out of your personal information so you don’t have to worry about identity theft on top of missing your laptop.

Drive Encryption

Windows is able to encrypt a directory or a disk drive that is using the NTFS file system (which if you’re on XP or Vista, you’re probably already using NTFS). If you right click on a directory, click on properties, then check the encrypt box. In my opinion it’s a waste of time because if you’re logged in (see above cracking of windows password) you can see that directory or drive.

There are several utilities that will encrypt your entire hard drive or just a directory or two.

TrueCrypt at truecrypt.org is a free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux. Unless you want to start messing around with your Boot Record, I would just create a virtual drive where you can keep your sensitive documents. Or move your entire My Documents folder to an encrypted drive. Otherwise you’re getting into territory where I’d have to charge you. Plus if you encrypt you’re entire drive, a large hard drive will take almost forever to encrypt. But after it’s done there is hardly any overhead and you probably won’t notice any slowdown.

Unless the thieves have seen this video or went to Princeton, your data is probably pretty secure.

This just proves that anything can be broken into with enough work. I would still use it, because the everyday thief that is breaking into your truck and sees an opportunity probably isn’t going to be doing this procedure.

Most software, including TrueCrypt can encrypt most drives including thumb USB drives. If you want a hardware encryption, look at Iron Key, “The World’s Most Secure Flash Drive”