James Neill

iTrader: (1)

A friend recently had his PC stolen and it had loads of personal info on the PC from bank account numbers to diary entries and even on-line gaming accounts. Took him ages to change passwords, credit cards and he's still worried that the thieves now know to much about him.

The XP logon is reasonably secure whilst the hard drive is in the PC, but there is nothing stopping someone plugging the hard drive in to another computer and reading all your files.

Anyway, long story cut short ... Windows does have encryption built in (Windows XP anyway) you just need to know how to use it. I found the following article which makes it easy to implement. We've done it on his new computer and I've done it on mine.

Guide: Windows XP Pro: Using File Encryption – part 1

I don't know why this encryption stuff is not more widely known/used. Guess, it's because Microsoft doesn't want loads of support calls when people foul it up. But the article does make it easy.

mike1210

Hard BIOS passwords and user account passwords for me (using desktops at home)

Encryption does give protection however this may hinder recovery tools if they are ever needed and still doesn't stop password reset tools that boot from CD

Dont get me wrong though it does stop the average thief from getting at your data so on mobile laptops and the like it's a useful security measure

As ever here backups to an external drive are also essential too

KiwiGTI

I would prefer to use PGP personally, and that's also what many government departments are required to use for secure documents.

judgejules

TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Linux

Main Features:

• Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.
  
  
• Encrypts an entire hard disk partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive.
  
  
• Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.
  
  
• Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:
  
  1) Hidden volume (steganography – more information may be found here).
  
  2) No TrueCrypt volume can be identified (volumes cannot be distinguished from random data).
  
  
• Encryption algorithms: AES-256, Serpent, and Twofish. Mode of operation: LRW.
  
  Further information regarding features of the software may be found in the documentation.