What is the best way to prevent theft of or recover a stolen laptop computer?

Answer 1

fingerprint thingy for log in, buy a program that emails you the IP address of the computer once per week so you can track it, you can get something that beeps loudly when you are a certain distance from the computer (good for airports or something i guess)

Answer 2

To prevent theft, never leave it out of your sight. Keep it under lock and key when it's not in use.

Recovery of stolen laptops is rare. If you have the serial number and give it to the police there is a small chance that it will be recovered but don't depend upon it.

There are some anti-theft services that run hidden on your computer and "phone home" every time the machine comes up on the internet. These can help assist in recovery of a stolen machine but prevention is always the best way.

Answer 3

To prevent theft of a laptop, there are some simple steps to secure your system and data even if stolen.

Make sure you have separated user accounts into classified groups.
Only 1 Admin needed
All other users should be in the group "Users"
Only excepted case is Pre-XP App Users, then place them in "Power Users"

We use Domain based Group Policy to secure client machines. This is easier for maintanence in the future.

I would recommend using a simple Windows program that has been in place since Windows 2000. This program is called syskey. This program encrypts the SAM Database and does not allow the machine to be logged in without this key. I save my startkey.key file on my biometric thumbdrive and use it with other secure software to authenticate my fingerprint to securely login.

We use BitLocker on our machines with TPM Chips for support for all users and the actual machine.

We also use EFS (Encrypting File System) (along with NTFS) so each users files are securely protected from any unauthorised users. This is the best protection that Windows provides to help keep your information secure.

To Encrypt a file or folder:
1) Just select the encryption checkbox in the advanced section of the file or folder properties.

WARNING: With EFS, make sure you export any OLD certificate keys before formatting old OS, otherwise you will NOT have access to these encrypted files


Last but not least, we have a script on our thumbdrives, that when inserted into a machine to start it up, if the thumbdrive is removed then the machine is shut down.

Hope this helps...

Certain sections of the military use the same steps outlined above as their baseline standard along with other specialized internal NISPOM programs.

Answer 4

Recover, call the company and they can trace the specific code via internet when the person goes on.

To prevent theft, keep it somewhere visible to you and lock it in a bad/carrying case with a small lock on the zipper.

Answer 5

Encryption is vast. no longer all human beings who steals a pc is state-of-the-paintings sufficient to reinstall the working equipment earlier doing something. maximum stolen pc desktops, in certainty, get related to the internet particularly promptly, and with their information and working structures intact. This makes retrieval of the device itself much less significant than restoration and deletion of the information on it, and there are some pc laptop protection technologies that permit you do those issues remotely. it is important to undergo in ideas that the mere presence of protection technologies on a pc, alongside with common-sense procedures like those reported right here, is sufficient of a robbery deterrent a great number of the time.

Answer 6

Lojak is now available for laptops.