Ask Slashdot: How To Secure My Life-In-A-Briefcase?

An anonymous reader writes "I used to travel with a book and some clothes in a backpack, and now my entire life fits into my briefcase. I have a laptop, a tablet, and a cell phone with access to all of my documents through Dropbox, and all the books I own are on my kindle. Aside from having about four grand in electronics, the bag has everything of value that I own. If that bag is stolen while I'm traveling, it will be more trouble than if my apartment burns down (while I'm not in it). What can I do to secure my life-in-a-briefcase?"

Comments

helpful suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

Change your briefcase from 12345...

Re:helpful suggestion

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Four thousand dollars, you say?

Remind me again, where do you live and what time do you leave each morning?

Re:helpful suggestion

[PPH]

Won't do you any good if the OP carries his stuff with him. You need to know which dark alleys he walks through.

Re:helpful suggestion

[catmistake]

Four thousand dollars, you say?

Many who purchase modern digital technology seem to be oblivious to the fact that it is not any kind of nostalgic keepsake, that almost without exception, it never appreciates in market value, and always depreciates quite rapidly (abiding by some corollary of Moore's Law). If there was $4,000 in cash, solid gold, or any precious metal, or even cocaine, it would be a different story. But the sad fact remains if the stuff in that briefcase is close to two years old (*and nothing in it was made by Apple, which for inscrutable reasons always retains a high resale value), then regardless of what you spent on it, its only worth, at best, half that, and is also replaceable with new for about half of what was spent (for the same level of technology). And the data? Unless one works for a secretive government agency, or Apple, then the data has no resale market value.

Re:helpful suggestion

[JWSmythe]

    Parking lots after hours are a choice with no witnesses.

    If he stops at a store on a regular basis on the way home, that works too. A smash and grab takes seconds, while a trip into any store takes minutes. No one cares about car alarms, you can trigger it and walk away, and no one will notice, as long as you aren't wearing a ski mask and looking totally suspicious. I doubt he carries his gear into every store he goes to.

    Most people's driveways feel safe, but are anything but. In most communities, people are inside, and wouldn't hear a thing. If there is security, their job is to observe, not confront. At best, they'll patrol a specific segment of the community every hour. At worst, once a night.

    His home itself if fair game. A bump key or lockpick gun will get you through virtually any residential doors with minimal hassle. 3am when everyone is sound asleep is the riskiest time. The door can even be locked on the way out to add to the confusion.

    For 4 grand cash (assuming it can all be converted to cash quickly), a stolen car and a staged traffic accident will stop the vehicle and get him out of the car with his doors unlocked.

    You aren't truly safe anywhere. You feel safe. A determined attacker will exploit any time he can.

    The best thing to do is, don't say you're carrying thousands of dollars of gear around. Don't look like you're worth attacking. I frequently travel in jeans and a t-shirt, carrying a ratty backpack. Sometimes it'll have some books. Sometimes it'll have electronics. Sometimes I have enough firepower to pick a fight with a street gang (when going to the shooting range).

    I never look like I have anything worth stealing. When I am dressed to impress, with the necessary accessories, I'm traveling directly from point A to point B, where both locations are relatively secure.

Don't do this!

[black6host]

Whatever you do don't handcuff your briefcase to your hand. At least not if you value your hand :)

Re:Don't do this!

[JimDarkmagic]

Perhaps the handcuff is extreme, but don't leave it or its contents unattended. Use one hand at the urinal (if applicable), saving the other to hold the briefcase. Use stalls with walls on two or more adjacent sides, keep briefcase on side of toilet with wall. Don't leave it on the convenient little shelf by the door in the bathroom (think I've seen a lot of dumb stuff in the bathroom?) Don't leave the stuff on the table as you walk across a huge room get more food/coffee.

Also, insurance for hardware, encryption for data. IOS has full disk encryption and Android might; truecrypt is cheap and easy to use and each major OS has its own native encryption solution.

Re:Don't do this!

[jtownatpunk.net]

Duh. You hire three ninjas and give each of them a briefcase. Only one is the real briefcase. The others are full of ninja-style weapons.

Re:Don't do this!

[loom_weaver]

My least favourite situation is when I've put my computer through the x-ray machine and then the line into the microwave gets tied up and I'm peering over security trying to make sure that no-one walks out with my precious....

Re:Don't do this!

[drkim]

Don't put your bag on the belt until the previous person has cleared the detector.

There are actually teams of two that work this way:

Bad#1 Walks through detector
You put your stuff on the belt
Bad#2 Gets delayed at the detector (Ooops! I forgot those keys)
Bad#1 Picks up your stuff
Bad#2 is visually distracting you, goes though the detector again, gets delayed, or finally clears
Your stuff is long gone, as is Bad#1

Re:Don't do this!

[JWSmythe]

    Actually, there have been many reports of someone "accidentally" walking off with someone elses stuff. Laptops are easy. Pick it up, slip it in your bag, and keep moving. A quick Google search shows all kinds of numbers being thrown around. It's more than 1, less than 1 million.

    When I refuse to go through the "microwave" (as the GP said), they pull me aside for the patdown. I keep an eye on my stuff until they're finally ready for me. I've had to ask security on multiple instances to secure *my* property, so no one else "accidentally" takes it. On very rare occasions did they guess what all of my property was.

    I think it's nuts. They pretend it's a high security environment, where anyone (and everyone) might be a terrorist. Yet, they go with the honor system for collecting your property from the x-ray conveyor belt, and at baggage claim. I've only been through a few airports (Las Vegas, and a few international destinations) that check the baggage claim ticket to the baggage you're taking. I don't even know if they do it as policy, or because someone was bored and wanted to harass travelers.

what is the problem you want to secure against?

[mrvan]

What is the problem you want to secure yourself against? The loss of 4k$? The loss of your data? The theft of your data?

The 4k$ cannot be secured other than through old fashioned don't let them steal it and/or (travel) insurance

The loss of your data is secured by diligent backing up, but if you rely on 'cloud' services that should be fine (I am sure that Amazon has some way of redownloading your books if your kindle is lost, no? DropBox certainly works as a backup plan). Make sure that the required configuration / passwords etc are somewhere.

The theft of your data is also not so difficult. DropBox copies the files locally, but if you just encrypt the whole drive that is works on you should be fine. If your device (tablet/cell phone) doesn't support that, and you fear theft, don't use dropbox on it or get a better device.

Re:what is the problem you want to secure against?

[heypete]

I had my car broken into once and a bag containing my laptop was stolen.

I called the cops, told them the make/model/serial numbers of all the various stuff in the bag (including the laptop), they gave me a police report, and I called my insurance. I got a new laptop and my car window repaired.

I wasn't worried the slightest bit about the contents of the computer as I used TrueCrypt with a secure password to encrypt the entire disk and all the data was backed up to a separate computer at home and a remote backup service. Once I got the new computer it only took about an hour and a half to restore everything.

If you have valuable information on a computer you should be using whole-disk encryption.

Insurance, Backups, Encryption

[lowy]

Get a rider on your home insurance policy that covers replacement of the hardware.

Automate regular backups to the Internet to protect your software.

Encrypt your data to protect your passwords, identity and privacy.

Am I missing anything?

A dead man's switch, obviously...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Contemporary fitness-use heart rate monitors with some flavor of very low power wireless connection are pretty cheap. One of those, plus a suitably sized explosive device, will allow you to ensure that your briefcase stays with you at all times. Or else. If you are feeling polite, scale to ensure the destruction of the contents. If not, scale to ensure the destruction of the would-be new owner of the briefcase.

(In all seriousness, though, there really isn't too much that one can do to protect small luggage. There are a few mostly-obvious behavioral tips, don't put it down behind your chair where you can't see it, don't leave it in the cab, try to avoid using bags that have giant steal-me logos advertising the electronics within, etc. but that is about it. Your main focus should be on two things:

1. If the bag falls into the possession of somebody else, have you taken measure to ensure that they can't get data access? Hardware can be insured, and really isn't all that expensive in the grand scheme; but if somebody has both your data and the oh-so-conveniently-stored-locally credentials for your 'cloud backup' you have a problem... 2. Backups, do you have them? Bags get lost, bags get stolen, bags get crunched by luggage handlers. If you can't restore yourself to what you had in the bag if I were to hand you equivalent-or-newer models of the laptop, tablet, and phone and internet access, you aren't prepared. If you can, then you are.)

Pelican 1490

[Anonymous Coward]

I travel around the world, and this is the best case I have ever used. Well, my Pelican 1514 is a close second. :)

It is waterproof, you can drop it or impact it and you don't need to worry about it, and it just works.

You can also lock it, or lock it to something (in your apt when you are away). Don't lock it someplace at an airport and leave...

I envy you in that you can fit everything in one case, I am trying to get down to one small car load with about 5-6 cases.

Re:Easy solution

[Nitewing98]

Kind of hard to get through airport security with a .45 on your person. Just sayin'.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

We're assuming that you're referring to your own post.

My list (I'm in a simular situation):

[Qbertino]

I'm follwing the cult of less myself, and while not all of my important stuff fits in a briefcase, it does fit into one room without it looking cramped or stuffed with junk - and I plan to reduce my stuff even more in the next few years.

Here's what I do:
My Hardware: MB Air, Mac Mini, HTC Flyer, HTC Desire HD
My local storage: 2 HDDs for TimeMachine, 2 HDDs for redundant backup, storage and archiving
My remote storage: Virtual Debian Server for word stuff versioned and synced with Git via SSH (roughly ten projects currently ... all my current work of the last year)

Disaster recovery via TimeMachine, Backup via two extra redundant external USB 3 2.5" HDDs, FS is HFS non-journaled for easy access from linux. Regular offsite versioning, archiving and backups via Git or SCP for the stuff I work on, Backup from Computers to HDDs via rsync. I rely on the Mac OS X AES 128bit encryption of the MB Air SDD for data security. My calendar is on Google and syncs with both HTC devices (anonymous/fake account) and iCal on the MB, my contact data is only in my phone. Still thinking about wether a fresh copy of 'Missing Sync' is worthwhile.

I store all my notes in Evernote. I have the Evernote client hooked to my Evernote account on all devices.

My next move will be an rsync setup with some low-power netbook/nettop PC running linux that pushed the contents of the HDDs to my server (rented virtual server running debian).

If my stuff gets stolen I've got my backups. If someone breaks into my room and steals the HDDs aswell I'm in deep shit - until I get my off-site routine running that is. I've been consolidating my data handling for about a year now and it will take another year or two until I've got it all in place, i.e.: Full and total off-site backup and desaster recovery preperation, fully redundant local backup, archiving and storage, zero-fuss cross-device automatic project syncing and fail-safe, secure contacts and calendering. ... I'm not to picky with encryption, the 128bit AES is enough for my taste. It's not that I work for the CIA or something.

Hope that helped.

PacSafe bag cages

[at.drinian]

There's a company called PacSafe that makes what are essentially collapsible wire cages you can wrap your bag in, and then chain the bag to something solid, like a drain pipe: http://pacsafe.com/ That being said, I went around the world a couple of times without one of these, and did just fine. They tend to draw attention.

Redundancy

[onyxruby]

First thought, you need a redundant provider to dropbox. Get Amazon or another provider to also sync your data. You sound like a road warrior and having been a road warrior your data is your life. Second thought, how are you going to survive a complete loss of your briefcase on the road? What have you done to encrypt your data? What have you done to have your devices home phone so that you can try to have police recover them?

You can replace tools like a phone or laptop, what is your gameplan to do so? Do you have credit capacity to replace everything on the spot? Insurance is a pain and can take weeks in a best case scenario to send a check. How are you going to document tat you secured your belongings in your room? If you can't prove use of a cable or the like and a police report no insurance company will replace your belongings?

Where is your password vault? It should not be in your briefcase?

Pick your gear carefully

[l0ungeb0y]

I am highly mobile and also carry my laptop and tablet in my briefcase. However, I chose the sturdiest, most versatile briefcase I could find. At 7.5lbs empty, it weighs nearly 20lbs with my gear in it and is not something a thief could easily run off with. The leather it's comprised of is 1/8" thick and has only 3 seams, and being leather, keeps the contents at a moderate temperature, which is excellent for electronics which may be heat sensitive.

My laptop, tablet and cell phone are all Apple products, which have the "FInd my Mac" feature allowing the devices to be located whenever they access a network. While not an anti-theft tool, the "Find my iPhone" and "Find my iPad" features have been shown to be quite useful in recovering lost and stolen iDevices. The "Find my Mac" feature is more questionable since most Macbook Pro users with even a hint of a clue will have their user accounts secured, meaning there is likely no way to associate the computer with your iCloud account even if a user logs in via the Guest Account. But if your briefcase is stolen with your iPad in it, the chances are pretty good that you can recover your iPad and briefcase. However, you'd be better off not placing your briefcase in a position where it could be stolen. If I were more paranoid, I would likely buy a GPS or RF transponder to stash in the deep recesses of my briefcase so that I could recover it regardless of net connectivity.

However, what happens if your briefcase is stolen with your laptop and tablet in it and they can not be recovered? Fortunately, iCloud helps alleviate this -- but only for app data and iTMS purchases. For my Document data and Software projects, I use an AWS Micro instance with Gitolite, which aside from allowing me to share and stage my development projects with other developers, it allows me to sync my entire Documents folder to the server. And being Git, it's easy to add certain files and directories to my .gitignore. To me at least, AWS Micro instance is the ideal remote backup solution since you can image your instance, effectively making a backup of the backup, it's on the cloud, so you can back up from anywhere you have a net connection and a Micro instance is free for the first year, $15.00/month after that, which is pretty cost effective.

So to sum it up for the tl;dnr crowd:
Get a hefty, durable briefcase that will both protect your gear and hinder theft
Buy products that enable tracking in case of loss/theft
Get a serious backup solution and use it