10 Simple Ways to Protect Your Laptop
There is a reason it's called a personal computer. Your laptop is valuable not simply because you paid several hundreds of dollars for it, but because you store personal information on it. And yet laptops are light, convenient, and so easy to leave sitting out while you go get a coffee . . .
. . . so with that in mind, here are NSIT's ten tips for keeping your computer safe!
- Lock it with a password. Nothing is more tempting to walk off with than a laptop that you can begin using immediately! Most operating systems allow you to place a password on your screensaver.
- Physically lock it. There are many excellent laptop locks and devices on the market today. Would you leave your bike out front of your building or in your bike room without locking it?
- Back it up. An external hard drive or a couple of DVDs can cost a lot, but the cost of data recovery is much, much higher.
- Keep system software or recovery CDs/DVDs with you. Viruses and other problems that require you to reinstall your computer's operating system are a reality of modern computing. Leaving home without your disks and needing to purchase new ones may force you to use something else that you're never supposed to leave home without: a credit card.
- Don't keep your personal information stored on it. If malicious individuals take your laptop, your documents, saved passwords, and other personal information is at their fingertips. Always keep passwords and personal data, such as banking information, separate from your laptop.
- Never loan it. What another individual does with your laptop may come back to haunt you in the form of spyware, viruses, and illegal content. Make sure you trust the people you lend your laptop to.
- Keep food and drinks away from it. Although it's very convenient to use your laptop while eating dinner, never forget that laptops are especially vulnerable to crumbs, coffee, and the occasional scoop of ice cream. An extra minute to finish your soda could have saved you from one very, very sticky keyboard.
- Make sure you patch it. Unlike a desktop computer, almost everyone uses their laptop wirelessly. Security updates, antivirus updates, and software patches can often be large, meaning they are slow to download on a wireless connection. Failing to keep your laptop updated is never good. Most victims of the notorious Conficker worm could have been protected with a single patch . . . which was released last year!
- Don't let it get too hot and overheat. A computer is a machine. A complex, useful one, but it is still a machine that uses electricity, has moving parts, and can overheat. Operating flat against a desk or leaving your laptop in direct sun for long period of time can lead to problems down the line if there's nowhere for the heat to go. Keep its ventilation in mind.
- Give it some rest. The hibernate feature on laptops is convenient, easy, and eliminates the tedium of having to shut down and restart every time. However, hibernation can lead to freezes, problems with switching from one wireless network to another, and slowdowns. Make sure to shut your computer down completely on a regular basis. Otherwise hibernation might become more tedious than a full startup and shutdown.
For more tips on how to keep your computer and personal information secure, visit our Safe Computing website.
Last updated: 10/1/09