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Just How Paranoid Are You?

Posted by timothy on from the will-the-guards-find-your-watch dept.

An anonymous reader writes "We all understand the need for security in a corporate environment. Personal computers, however, typically don't have nearly the amount of sensitive information (or it's at least less damaging if found). How far do you go to protect your computer? I recently went overboard on securing my information (at least as secure as Windows XP can be). I have a hardware firewall (GTA GB500), 30 character password, and all remotely personal information stored on a 256bit AES encrypted volume. How far do you go to protect your information against 'Big Brother' or even your family/friends?"

2 of 931 comments (clear)

  1. Big Brother... by djsmiley · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is there any point in trying to protect against BIG Brother really? I mean, if they WANT to get in, they could just storm your house and take away your PC. If the want they could slience you too. So why go so over the top?

    Another idea is to make sure any sensitive infomation doesn't have any means of escape, hell build a machine with no network, and no floppy drive or cd writer. Take out the usb slots too, then maybe a passer by wont be able to access it.

    30char password? Whats the point? I mean you can still brute force it, and even without doing this, theres still methods such as removing the hdd drive, mounting it under anther computer and 99% time, you got instant access to everything.

    People need to learn, senstive data is only protected in ONE place, inside our minds.
    Keep it there and no one can snoop it.

    --
    - http://www.milkme.co.uk
  2. Knoppix STD by Bruzer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Good topic. I wish there were more serious posts so the rest of us could gleam some knowledge from the replies instead of the geeks trying to be funny.

    We had a couple people leave work recently and they had some data in the computer that we needed to get ahold of. Since my company requires passwords and restrictive permissions on all Windows systems my team was worried that we might never get the docs off the systems.

    A co-worker got out the Knoppix security tools distribution ( http://www.knoppix-std.org/ ) CD and was able to bypass the Windows passwords very easily. And it read the hard drive ignoring windows permissions.

    If someone wanted a secure system. The Knoppix STD CD could be a good tool to use. Try and see if you or a trusted friend could get in to your PC.

    - Bruzer (trying to be constructive)

    --
    "Tempt not a desperate man" - Willy S.