In my last post (Delete Your Laptop?), I mentioned that one of the ways to protect your laptop is to encrypt the data. In simple terms, encryption scrambles the data so it can’t be read without an encryption key or password. If you have a laptop with an encrypted hard drive, even if hackers remove the drive and hook it up as a secondary drive on some other machine, they still must have the key to get to your data.

if you own a Mac computer, encryption is built-in. However, you do need to make sure it’s turned on and that a password is set. You can do that by clicking on the Apple in the upper left-hand corner of your computer, then clicking on System Preferences. Once the new window opens, click on Security & Privacy. Click on the FileVault tab. There, you’ll be able to see if encryption (FileVault) is turned on or off.

On a Windows machine, there is no built-in encryption program unless you are running the Pro or Enterprise versions of Windows. The program is called BitLocker. For this feature alone, it might be worth paying the $99 to upgrade your Windows Home version to Pro.

On both a Mac and a Windows PC, you can decide to encrypt the entire hard drive or just the portion being used. (In other words, you don’t encrypt the free space.) Either way, encrypting the drive takes a fair amount of time. The good news is that you can use your computer while the encryption is happening.

If you use encryption, you must use a password to log-in to your machine. One word of caution: if you encrypt your laptop, you must store the encryption key some place safe. If you lose the key and forget your password, you will lock yourself out of your own computer. Both Apple and Microsoft give you the option to store your key online but you have to choose to do that.

Needless to say, all of my laptops are encrypted. All of my laptops are protected by backup and by Lojack For Laptops, as well. (I mentioned both of these items in the last blog post.)

There are a zillion horror stories about lost and stolen laptops. Remember, just because you only use your laptop at home and don’t have to worry about losing it, having it stolen is still a real possibility.

Now is the time to take action.