Wright PC Consulting, LLC

With all the reports of data loss these days, many clients are asking how they can best secure their own data while traveling with their laptops. For those road worriers that want the ability to transparently access and secure their personal data while traveling, I usually recommend that they consider encrypting their data with the open source solution TrueCrypt.Here we will explore the methods that I use to help protect my own data as well as maintain the easy of use that I had grown used to. While TrueCrypt is a multi platform solution, my current usage as described below is on a Dell laptop with Windows XP Pro.

• Download and install TrueCrypt.
• As I did with creating a backup partition, I created a partition for just my data. But this time, I created it as a file on my data partition.
• Once the new TrueCrypt partition has been created, mount the new partition move all personal data including My Documents, My Pictures, IE Favorites, FireFox Bookmarks, Outlook .pst files, Thunderbird data, Temp Folders and any other data that you want to secure.
• Remap the default Windows folders to the newly secured locations
• Set the encrypted partition as a favorite and tell TrueCrypt to mount it on startup.
• Set TrueCrypt to start at Windows start.

Now, every time Windows starts, TrueCrypt will prompt for your password and then mount your secure partition. While this method is not foolproof, none really are, you can now rest reasonably sure that if your laptop is ever stolen, your personal data will remain safe.