New Laptop Polices

Sat Aug 12 14:44:33 UTC 2006

On 8/11/06, Christopher L. Morrow
<christopher.morrow at verizonbusiness.com> wrote:
> > It's also a great time to plant some file that POOF the authorities
> > will decrypt & show it's kiddie porn. {Or just hide same in your
> > browser cache.} Do YOU know what every frigging file on your
> > machine is?
>
> and here I was thinking: "Quick! buy stock in whole disk encryption
> software makers!"

Any laptop NOT using full disk encryption from the moment of boot-up
is begging for trouble.  As has been pointed out many times, laptops
DO get lost, and not just in airline facilities.

This can be accomplished with just about any OS.  Some require loading
an OS kernel first with a custom ramdisk or mini-partition to kick off
the encrypted disk driver; others can use off the shelf products
designed expressly for this purpose.

The only thing that bugs most people about full disk encryption is
that it often doesn't support "hibernation" -- but if the hardware has
a standby power save mode that is low enough on power consumption (S3
or similar), that shouldn't be a problem.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv at duh.org> <tv at pobox.com> <todd at vierling.name>