Why Your Laptop Needs An “Instant Kill” Switch

It’s lunch time and you stop by your favorite café to check e-mail and grab a bite to eat. You settle in at a table when your pickup number is called. Returning to your table, you find your laptop and appetite—has disappeared!

Okay, maybe you’re not foolish enough to leave your laptop unattended in a public place, but one of your employees might think it’s okay to leave a laptop or PDA in their car, a hotel room, or in their gym bag and end up exposing your company’s data and network to thieves.

If it hasn’t happened to you or someone you know, according to the FBI, it will. Sure you have a backup of the data, but now detailed information about you, your family, your business and your clients is in the hands of a criminal intent on stealing your money, identity or worse. There is a lot of software and hardware that protects your data from being stolen by online criminals, but how do you protect your data when someone steals your physical laptop or PDA?

Until now, your only recourse was to change the passwords to your network, financial websites, etc., watch your credit report and cross your fingers hoping for the best. But thanks to new security software, you can instantly erase all of the data on your laptop or PDA preventing thieves from accessing the data.

Here’s how it works: Special security software is installed on your laptop that checks for your “kill” command whenever it connects to the Internet. This happens even before Windows prompts for the user name and password. If it receives the “kill” message, the data on your computer is instantly destroyed. You may not get your laptop back, but you’ll prevent the thief from stealing the information it contains.

If you’re a business, check out Absolute Software’s Computrace and Novell’s ZENworks. Both should be installed and configured by your system administrator or a computer consultant. If you want to protect your home computer or personal laptop, use zTrace’s zControl. Although designed for the general public, it can be confusing to install and configure so seek the help of a professional.

In the PDA world, there’s remoteProtect from sCPsOFT for Windows CE, Windows Mobile and Pocket PC devices or Bluefish’s Central for the Palm Treo. If your PDA is stolen, you simply text a message to it that includes your password and the PDA is reset to its blank factory default condition. What could be easier?

As with all theft and hacker deterrents, thieves can circumvent this software by downloading your data before connecting the device to the Internet. Surprisingly, the typical thief isn’t smart enough to know this. So, for absolute security, data encryption remains the most reliable form of protection. Encrypted data is unreadable to thieves unless they have your encryption key. There are pros and cons to both approaches, but it’s important for you to have SOME protection. For help in determining the best solution for you, give us a call at :

508 992 2541

Tips For Handling, Storing, and Disposing Of Confidential Documents

In the past 10 years, over 10,000 new regulations have been placed on the books by local, state and federal agencies pertaining to the handling, storage, and disposal of confidential client, patient, and employee documents.

A few examples are:

• SEC Rule 17a-4 Electronic Storage of Broker Dealer Records Graham-Leach-Bliley Act
• Financial Services Modernization Act
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act 
• DOD 5015.2 Department of Defense 
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) 
• Fair Labor Standards Act  
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Act 
• Payment Card Industry Data Security (PCI DSS) 

No matter how small your business is, you are surely going to be affected by one or more of these new government regulations. Naturally some industries are more regulated, such as financial or medical, but all companies that hold information such as employee social security numbers, credit cards, financial statements (credit applications, bank statements, order forms) fall under these new regulations.

While we cannot cover every single aspect of protecting your company, here are a few tips that will go a long way in making sure you don’t end up fined, sued, or with a bad reputation for not securing your clients information:

• Seek professional help. If you think you are holding confidential information that should be secured, ask a qualified attorney who specializes in data confidentiality in your industry about what you must do to meet new government regulations. 
• Shred all documents that contain confidential information. A good shredder should do a cross cut or diamond cut versus a simple strip shredder to make it more difficult for someone to piece together a shredded document. 
• If you have to keep a copy of contracts or other documents that contain confidential information, contact a high-security document storage facility like Iron Mountain (ironmountain.com) and they will store your documents in a high-security location. 
• Keep a fire-proof safe with a lock and key for employee documents you need to keep onsite. 
• Make sure your offsite backups have 32-bit encryption (ask your provider). Also make sure the facility where the information is stored is under lock and key with security camera and access-controlled security.