Keep your laptop safe and secure while you travel

By Jeandre de Beer / Pc World

Your laptop is your pride and joy. It’s your umbilical cord to the office. It’s your entertainment at the airport and on the plane.

You bring it everywhere you go. But there are all too many ways that it can come to harm.

Follow these tips to keep your laptop safe and secure while you travel, and you won’t have to worry while you and your notebook are on the road.

1. Keep it padded

Traveling is full of shoving bags into tight spots, jostling them about, and stuffing in just one more thing. Push a little too hard, however, and you may hear an investment-shattering crack. Buy a laptop-specific carrying case with plenty of padding and protection. 

Separate compartments for accessories and power cables are a luxury that can keep your PC scratch- and dent-free. To deter theft, choose a nondescript bag, without logos advertising that valuable merchandise sits inside.

2. Turn it off

For laptop makers, it’s difficult to pack a powerful computer into a slim enclosure while keeping all of its critical components nice and cool. But that’s what the laptop’s vents and fans are for.

Now imagine the heat that can accumulate in the secure, padded, tight quarters of a laptop bag. 

Don’t cram a sleeping computer into the confines of a backpack or messenger bag. Heat is a computer’s number one enemy. Heat can shorten your computer’s useful life, loosen components in the motherboard, or destroy it entirely.

Block a running computer’s vents for extended stretches, and you could find yourself unpacking a fried PC. Power down the laptop before you stow it.

3. Keep an eye on it, but keep it out of sight

Laptops are hot-ticket items for thieves. Keep yours on your lap or within view while you’re at the airport, bus, or train terminal. Don’t set the machine on an adjacent seat and then turn your attention to your phone or your kids. 

When traveling by car, keep your laptop hidden. Leaving it exposed on the passenger seat, even when you’re getting out for only a few minutes to pump gas, could be the perfect opportunity for a sticky fingered individual to scoop up the loot.

Keep it in the trunk or under the seat, or cover it with a jacket.

And keep your car locked at all times. If in spite of your best efforts your laptop still winds up missing, you might be able to recover it—provided that you installed a program such as LoJack before you hit the road.

4.  Back it up and lock it down

What could be worse than losing your laptop? Losing the data you have on it. Follow a backup regimen, keeping a copy of your important data on a hard drive at your home or office or in the cloud. 

And what could be worse than losing the information stored on your laptop? Knowing that some unsavory person has access to it. Your machine might even have enough personal information and photos for someone to steal your identity.

Protect yourself by locking it all down with a strong password and encryption. Be sure to store any written-down passwords and sensitive data away from the laptop itself.

5.   Remember, you’re in public

When you’re wandering between public Wi-Fi networks, it’s easy to pick up hitchhikers in the form of viruses, malware, and snoops. Make sure that you have an up-to-date antivirus utility and current antispyware software installed and running in the background.

Keep your system’s firewall up. When you’re connected to an unfamiliar  network, it’s best to be paranoid and treat everything like an enemy. If possible, avoid uploading personal information to the Internet while you’re using a public Wi-Fi connection; wait until you’re on a secured network to do sensitive stuff. 

If you must perform an online transaction, confirm that the Web address begins with “https” and that a locked padlock icon appears in the corner of the browser window or in the address bar, indicating that you’re connected to a secure site.