In the past 10 days or so there have been break-ins to two neighbouring properties (and at least another two attempted), one of which I am looking after while the owner is on holiday. (I'm really looking forward to collecting him and his brother from the airport next week. The brother's car was stolen and semi burnt out!)
In the most recent burglary a laptop computer was stolen which has really made me think about computer and data security. Whilst I have good home security there is always the possibility that one or more of my PCs could be stolen. I store a lot of personal data on my computers, typically in Word, Excel, and pdf documents, and some in proprietary software. Passwords are held in a highly encrypted database (and of course all data is backed up to a separate hard drive) but most documents are available when the PCs are running. There is no security on the backup drive.
So how do I stop a third party gaining access to my data? From what I have seen on the web, it would seem that password protection of a PC running Windows (I have XP and W7) can fairly easily be broken. There are data encryption utilities available but, whilst these are no doubt effective, access to documents would be a real pain when having to enter encryption keys every time they are opened.
Does anyone have any experience or advice to offer?
In the most recent burglary a laptop computer was stolen which has really made me think about computer and data security. Whilst I have good home security there is always the possibility that one or more of my PCs could be stolen. I store a lot of personal data on my computers, typically in Word, Excel, and pdf documents, and some in proprietary software. Passwords are held in a highly encrypted database (and of course all data is backed up to a separate hard drive) but most documents are available when the PCs are running. There is no security on the backup drive.
So how do I stop a third party gaining access to my data? From what I have seen on the web, it would seem that password protection of a PC running Windows (I have XP and W7) can fairly easily be broken. There are data encryption utilities available but, whilst these are no doubt effective, access to documents would be a real pain when having to enter encryption keys every time they are opened.
Does anyone have any experience or advice to offer?