Protect Your Laptop While Working Outside of the Home or Office
We’ve all seen it – a person hard at work on their laptop at the local coffee shop, restaurant, park or airport. A large slice of the workforce these days is working longer hours or alternate hours. And because many are not tied to a desk or set office space, they can do their work anywhere.
But how do you protect your laptop while you’re working outside of the house or traveling? What can you do to protect your computer from being stolen? What can you do to keep the information stored on your computer from being compromised?
Here are 4 ways to protect yourself:
Be self-aware
This means keeping an eye on your surroundings. Just because everyone in the coffee shop looks nice doesn’t mean you can leave your computer unattended for a 3 minute bathroom break. Keep your eye on your laptop and on the traffic of people coming and going. Let common sense guide you. Also, don’t put your laptop on the floor in a crowded area. You might forget it while paying a tab or taking a phone call.
Screen guards are good
We all view personal information that we’d likely prefer a stranger not to see. Some work documents are not for the general public. Screen guards help keep prying eyes from viewing your information. This is especially handy if you need to log in and out of multiple accounts and you have user names and passwords open.
Passwords are key
Use strong passwords. In this day and age, this should be the most common advice, but people still tend to go with what’s easy to recall. What’s convenient for you though may also be convenient to someone else who has the wrong intentions. Someone looking over your shoulder could see your email address as a user name and then make a decent guess on your password as they watch you type it in.
Use a security device
Laptop security cables are great. They affix a cable running from your laptop to something solid like a chair, table or wall. There are also programs you can install on your computer that will report the location of the stolen laptop.
As the number of people working out of the office increases, so will the numbers of stolen computers and compromised data. Taking simple steps and having a security plan will help you. Stay safe!
