USB "dongle" to protect laptop

[Ivor Jones]

Hi, not sure if this is the right group to ask this, if not perhaps
someone can point me in the right direction.

I have seen available USB "dongles" that plug into a laptop's USB port
that can be used as a security measure, i.e. the dongle is required to log
on to the machine, if the laptop is stolen and the thief tries to use it,
he can't if the dongle isn't in place.

Does anyone know anything about how these work..? Are they reliable..?
Being the worrying type I am concerned that if I used one of these the
control software might malfunction and stop *me* getting into the
machine..!

Any thoughts/advice appreciated.


Ivor

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Hi, not sure if this is the right group to ask this, if not perhaps
someone can point me in the right direction.

I have seen available USB "dongles" that plug into a laptop's USB
port that can be used as a security measure, i.e. the dongle is
required to log on to the machine, if the laptop is stolen and the
thief tries to use it, he can't if the dongle isn't in place.

Does anyone know anything about how these work..? Are they
reliable..? Being the worrying type I am concerned that if I used
one of these the control software might malfunction and stop *me*
getting into the machine..!

Any thoughts/advice appreciated.

My thought would be that even if the dongle is needed to boot into the OS -
unless this is a hardware level protection - then simply making an image of
the unbootable system would give the "thief" access to any unencrypted data
on it and then formatting it and installing the OS of their choice makes the
laptop usable again.

 

[Guest]

http://www.truecrypt.org/

This is very good, and free. It requires you to type a password, but
otherwise does what you want.

However, don't lose the key!

 

[Ivor Jones]

http://www.truecrypt.org/

This is very good, and free. It requires you to type a
password, but otherwise does what you want.

However, don't lose the key!

Looks interesting, but I really want a hardware solution such as a dongle
that I can attach to my keyring the same way as a flash drive.

Ivor