Securing Your Laptop Against Theft

Just about every technological step forward comes with a trade-off. The benefits of the advancement have to be weighed against a weakness or flaw. In the case of the increasingly popular notebook PC, that flaw is the greater risk of theft.

Portable and productivity-enhancing, notebooks are also easily stolen. And the costs associated with losing a notebook can go far beyond the replacement cost of the machine itself. By the reckoning of IT research firm Gartner Group, the loss of a single laptop to theft averages $6,285 when you include replacement of not only hardware and software but also the loss of productivity. And that's before you factor in the cost of any data stored on the hard drive.

With the value of that information in mind, hard-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology (STX) has just launched a new line of hard drives that protect data using encryption technology, which renders information useless to anyone who doesn't have the coding key—and, in particular, potential notebook thieves.

Securing Your Laptop Against Theft