Perhaps one of a pair of thieves distracts you while the other makes off with your computer. Maybe there is a moment s inattention while you collect your suitcase at the airport, and your laptop is stolen behind you. Worse than losing the computer, which may be worth a few thousand dollars, the hard drive may contain millions of dollars of proprietary information or trade secrets, or even national security information. Protecting the laptop physically is your first line of defense. Be aware that it is a target for thieves and take extra care to protect it as you travel.
Backups are also a problem.
Back up your work to removable media, and store them separately from the laptop in a pocket or a different case. If physical protection fails, however, and thieves get the hardware, you can still make sure they don t get the secrets that your laptop contains. Your second line of defense is software that controls access to the computer. For this purpose, you cannot rely on protection built into the operating system. In systems using Microsoft Corp. s Windows, for example, the thieves just boot with their own DOS disk and gain access to the directory structure and to your files.