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!

[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

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'.

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.