Most of us know about the latest high-profile cases, where highly confidential information, it into the public domain, as a result Sloppy security notebook. These cases led to considerable public embarrassment for companies (or governments) involved, and questioning the lack of internal procedures for operating in a safe environment.

This security issue (especially on laptops and removable media) are not limited to the area businesses and those traveling with personal laptop or netbook will be subject to the same danger.

Can you afford to have your confidential information to transform it into the hands of some anonymous third party. What is the risk for you if your personal information is posted on the sites to steal data for public consumption?

The implications of this scenario should be cool for most people, but the good news is that there are things you can do to avoid this, only if the data puts into the hands of another.
In order to protect your data, there are three main options available to you;

[1]. Do not store sensitive information on your laptop.
[2]. Encrypting the entire hard drive.
[3]. Using the “encrypted volumes” to secure your data.

Let’s take a closer look at these options and consider the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Option 1: Do not store any confidential information on your laptop.

Thus, I hope that most readers understood that, although it is a very safe option, in fact it is very limiting. You may be able to apply this approach to the sub-set of your privacy, but most of us need to have access to certain pieces of data, which we treated as confidential, during the working day.

Option 2: encrypt an entire hard drive.

In recent years it has become much easier to achieve, especially in the operating systems have become more advanced. Ten years ago you would simply not have been able to do so without specialist (read: expensive) third-party software.

Fortunately, with the most modern systems to encrypt volume available and gives you an increase in seismic safety of the system.

Full hard disk encryption works by making the system available only to those with the appropriate phrase or password. Once encrypted with your operating system will handle the job receive encrypted data from your hard drive, authentication, and then decoding on the fly and in most cases you do not have contact with the ugly details of how it works (when the system was set-Up) .

Unfortunately, there are a couple significant reasons for encrypting an entire disk can be problematic, and it should be given serious consideration before you begin the setup process.

Performance:

Although modern machines are well defined, the process of encryption and decryption comes at a price, and leads to a drop in productivity. You may notice that your machine is running a little slower, because the computational processes are not negligible – your machine to decipher all (including the annexes, as well as your data) before you can use them, and then reverse the process (Re – encryption) Once you’ve finished.

Recoverability:

Much of the security, which encrypts the entire disk is how the hard disk encryption “in load” to your system. It can use a passphrase or a password to validate your access to the system, but it can also be added that verification should be the hardware of the computer ‘has not changed, thereby declaring that the hard drive was removed and installed in another computer.

This process raises the question of what do you do if your laptop has become irreversibly damaged.

For example, let’s imagine that you drop your laptop and the screen cracks. You will not be able to get it repaired, since the model was discontinued and the replacement of the screen (with all the repair costs), so high that you have decided that it was better to put money towards the cost of the new machine.

Experimenting with a broken machine, you know that your hard drive is still working, and you decide to remove and place it on an external drive is USB. Thus, you can recover data from disk. It looks like a reasonable approach as long as you are trying to access the data only to find that the disk becomes unavailable.

When you have deleted from the hard drive of your notebook, you broke the cryptographic link between the hard drive and his car was originally installed on, thereby triggering the security inherent in the encrypted disk. It was the whole point of encrypting the hard drive in the first place, so that if it was stolen (or not attached to a laptop) Your confidential information will remain secure.

Such use of encrypting the entire hard drive is an excellent way to protect data, but it has its price and has some pretty significant flaws.

My recommendation is to use an encrypted volume that can be mounted as an additional hard drive, which is fully portable (ie it can be on a hard drive or external drive – for example, USB sticks).

There are a number of software applications that offer this capability, but, as always, I would like to emphasize cross-platform, no Bloatware decisions. My solution is called “Truecrypt ‘and can be found at www.truecrypt.org.

Option 3: Using the “encrypted volumes” to secure your data.

Application Selection – TrueCrypt

Truecrypt is an excellent solution encryption and ticks all the boxes.

Truecrypt is a cross-platform so it will run on your computer, your Macintosh or Linux distribution. This product ‘Open Source “, so he is free to use, and it has the full functionality of any solution volume encryption, I have worked with. The application does not care where you want to create your file size, so it is completely portable, and (as he works on all popular operating systems) can be created on one system and then moved to another without any problems, your data will still be safe and secure.

Here is a very simple overview of how Truecrypt works.

The first stage in establishing safe levels to create an encrypted container. This is the only file that will act just that installed (all the parts needed for this puzzle are included in Annex TrueCrypt).

Before the encrypted container, it is important to think about the password that you will use each time you need to access your data. It must be complex (ie a combination of alpha and numeric, it is also a good idea to include wildcard characters), first of all, make sure you can remember your password, because without it, your data will be lost forever.

In addition, you must decide in advance that the necessary size of your container. Too big and you have a long (very frustrating) periods of waiting for you for it to be copied from one place to another, are too small and you will keep Running Out Of Space. I think probably the decisive factor in the “How much?” The question of how often I expect to move the containers, and what kind of materials I will use.

Like many people I tend to move the data on the USB Stick and it governs the overall size of my container.

Once you have decided on the size of the container next to his name, and then select the encryption algorithm “- it basically means” to choose it safe you want to be. ” What you choose for encryption algorithm may be determined by legal requirements, where you live, and I can not tell you that in this article. If in doubt, leave it on the default setting of “AES”.

Have you decided how big your container should be, and you need to tell it to the next preceding enter your complex password. Remember that this is the password that you enter every time you want to get access to the encrypted volume. If you’re worried about fumbling the password that you can always check the option “Show password” and make sure you do it right before moving on.

Before you can use your new container, it must be formatted so it can be recognized in the operating system. If you are not a container format, you can not write or copy data. You need to be a little careful in choosing the format option if you want to provide cross-platform operability. If you are in any doubt about which format to use just leave the default setting “FAT” atmosphere.

In the final screen format (Volume Format) you will be presented with a screen showing the number of random numbers, it is called “Random Pool” and ensures that you are using a strong encryption key. Just move your mouse around in this screen for some time before formatting that the more you spend it better than your encryption keys will be.

One thing that the information on this creative process is that after the completion of the screens will try to start the whole process again. If you only need one container this may be a bit confusing, but a way out of the screen to return you to the main window of the TrueCrypt. You are ready to mount a new container for the first time.

With the option “Select File” to find your new file, and then select a free drive letter from the screen above. This is where your new volume will be mounted. Enter your password and click on “grief” to complete the process, your new volume appears in the File Browser (Explorer Windows, Macintosh Finder or the equivalent of Linux) as a new local disk (look for the drive letter you chose earlier).

There are several additional Truecrypt about things that make this great application. Among them are my favorites include the ability of your file browser displays the newly mounted, thus saving you the trouble to go look. I also like the opportunity to have Truecrypt to close automatically if there is no encrypted volume mounted. This is important because it covers another important aspect of the protection of confidential data that visibility.