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Re: Safety for portables: Password Wallet
Authored by: henry on Jan 30, '04 10:03:23AM

Kristofer -- point taken. I did consider the issue of security whilst logged in, and I agree that this is not the ideal solution for everyone. Perhaps I should have included my thoughts on this in the original hint, but I didn't want it to be overly wordy.

I agree that this system does not offer any protection against someone stealing your machine whilst you're logged in, or remotely accessing your machine whilst you're logged in and the image is mounted.

I also agree that this system is, therefore, not a good solution for everyone. However, in my case, I take steps to secure my machine while online at home, and I'm behind a pretty good firewall while in my department. I also set my machine not to wake from sleep without a password, and I use a password protected screensaver on a short fuse. Either of these measures would cause a thief to reboot, thus unmounting the disk image.

I realise that this hardly constitutes a secure system, but when you consider that I use a strong password, which I change regularly, and that the nefarious types that engage in ID theft currently target windows machines (or at least expect to find a windows machine when they open the stolen bag), I consider it to be secure enough for me.

Of course, others will need to make that decision for themselves. For me, this system provides an acceptable level of security, especially when you consider the ease of use. Again, this is only my personal opinion, and I know you're not supposed to sacrifice security to gain usability, but, well, I'm prepared to in this case.



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