Gongol.com Archives: July 2025
July 15, 2025
Lock your doors (and your drives)
Most people who have parked in a ramp or a lot have seen a sign warning "Hide your valuables -- Management not responsible for lost or stolen items". For most people, that means things like keys, wallets, bags, and purses. Most of us are not traveling with items much more valuable than that. ■ But then again, most of us aren't choreographers or dancers for Beyonce, one of whom had a pair of suitcases stolen from a vehicle in Atlanta a week ago. One of those suitcases contained computer hard drives with unreleased musical tracks from the artist. In theory, at least, it would be quite the haul for a burglar. ■ The incident speaks to the importance of using security codes and encryption on really sensitive data. In theory, if the heisted hard drives were secured with the kind of basic encryption readily available on any serious computing platform, then the music would remain inaccessible even to a lucky thief. ■ Having to enter a code every time one accesses a hard drive is a pain and an inconvenience, but it's also the price of knowing that data is secure -- just like Beyonce undoubtedly has bodyguards for the security of her person. For the rest of us, encrypting everything may be overkill. But good lock screen codes, long passphrases, and encryption on the most valuable (and most portable) data devices are as necessary as locking the doors to a car in a parking garage.
