Secure portable hard drives

I love cool new technology that solves problems. Here has been my problem:

As a guy who is really into redundancy and really into backups, I never leave the office without without a working backup copy of my laptop hard drive. This is a good thing and has saved me a number of times, but also poses a really big security problem.

Where my laptop is password protected and has the hardware firmware enabled, so it is relatively secure if it ever gets snatched, that portable hard drive I carry as a backup is not. It is wide open and easy prey if it ever gets lost or stolen. Where you can use Filevault or other security methods to encrypt the contents of the drive, it prevents it from being bootable, which is one of the things I need in case my main drive in the laptop goes belly-up.

There is a new solution out there that solves this problem. It is currently marketed by Lenovo (yeah, the ThinkPad folks.) It is called the USB Secure Hard Drive. It comes in 160 gb and 320 gb flavors and is not altogether unreasonably priced.

I know, I know, it is only USB2 and not firewire, but I have to let you in on a little secret. I bought one of the new MacBooks and love it and I am actually doing pretty well sans firewire. Buy if you are running 10.5 you can boot up from a USB drive anyways, firewire or not. And now you can do it securely so what could be better than that?

How it works:

You plug it in to your computer, a little red light turns on next to the keypad on the drive. You enter your password and hit the unlock button and the light turns green the drive mounts and you are good to go. Without the password, you can't mount the drive. Since it is a hardware solution, you can pull the drive out of the case and put it in another case and it still won't work. Without the password the data on the drive can't be accessed.

HA! Take that bad guy who steals my drive!


Ohhhhh I love cool new stuff that solves problems.

Securing Your Laptop - software and firmware

How easy would it be exploit the contents of your laptop if it was taken? What kind of information is stored on your laptop that you wouldn't want to fall into the hands of criminals? Passwords, banking records, serial numbers, images, contacts and access to any online account that you have "remember me" set up for. Think about all the times people say "I have my entire life on my laptop."

Which means if your laptop gets stolen, and it isn't secure, the person that swipes it suddenly gets to be you... with access to your email, banking and whatever else they can find on it until you can change all your passwords... unless the bad guy beats you to the punch and changes them all for you, effectively locking you out of your own online life.

Here are some things you can do to help prevent this from happening.

1. In System Preferences go to "Security" and check the boxes that say "Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver" and "Disable automatic login."
   
   By doing this, your computer will require you to input your password every time you start your computer and to wake it up from sleep or the screen saver. So if someone steals your laptop, they won't be able to start your computer or use it because they won't know your password.
   
   
2. Use a real password that is at least 6 characters long that uses both letters and numbers and a capital letter or two for good measure. pswd, 0000, 1234, abcd, qwerty, admin, and guest are really not secure passwords... those are all things that crooks are going to try if they are attempting to get into your computer. Avoid your name, your kids names, Canon and/or Nikon for that matter as well... those are all easy to guess.
   
   After you've crafted your password, make sure you remember what it is. Don't write it down on a piece of gaffers tape and stick it to your laptop. That defeats the purpose of having a password. Keep in mind that if you have a password written down, someone could potentially log into your machine over a wireless network you share and access your data that way as well... keep your password a secret.
   
   
3. Enable the firmware password for your laptop. Here are Apple's instructions on how to do it. By turning this feature on, it prevents someone from being able to boot up your laptop from an external device (like a hard drive) or boot it up in any of the diagnostic modes that exist under OS X. The only option for someone would be to do a clean install of the entire machine with an OS X DVD.
   
   This means that your computer is pretty much a brick to anyone that swipes it and doesn't have your user password or the firmware password. If they want to use your computer, they would have to start all over. This means that your data potentially stays safer and is much, much more difficult to access than if you laptop was wide open.
   
   
4. Protect critical data with encryption. Use File Vault (built in) or use Knox to create secure folders on your hard drive to protect critical data. That adds yet another layer of security to your Mac laptop. Password protecting Word, Excel, or other documents is not really any protection at all. There are a ton of ways to quickly crack password protected files.
   
   
5. Protect serial numbers, passwords, and banking info on your laptop. Laptops allow us to run our business from where ever we happen to be. That means that we also have to carry around all the logins and passwords to be able to do that. Securing this data is critical.
   I have recently found 1Password which I am totally taken with because of its ability to autofill passwords on websites, sync between my different computers using my .Mac account and the fact that it is locked tight when not in use. It is the best $25 you could spend to secure and synchronize your password data.
   
   
6. GET REVENGE. A really cool app that has been released for the Mac (and specifically for the MacBook and MacBook Pro with their built-in cameras) is called Undercover. What it does is installs software in the background of your computer that does nothing except check in with their server every so often when it is online. If your laptop gets lifted, you alert Orbicule (the folks that make Undercover) and the next time your laptop goes online and checks in with their server it will start sending photos of the user taken with the built in camera, logging the websites that the user goes to and what he types while he is there, logs their IP addressand send all that stuff to Orbicule in the background so the bad guy has no idea that his every move is being recorded. You then forward all that to the cops and they can get your laptop back and a free trip to the gray bar hotel for the jerk who took it.
   

Securing your Mac -- A good read

The good folks over at TUAW (The Unauthorized Apple Weblog) have a whole series on securing your Mac.

This was published a while ago but since it is still something good to take a look at and bookmark-worthy. While Macs are still less troubled by security issues than PC's, there are still some things you can do (and things to look out for) to keep safe.

While you are there, don't miss the link to increasing your safety while surfing on unsecured wifi networks. I personally avoid "free" wifi networks because of privacy concerns... you never know who is watching as your check email and do your online banking and keeping track of your info...

I hope you have a great Christmas... it' time to go unwrap presents with the kids... woohoo!