With all the hoopla around new worms and potential new threats to wireless services and devices, it's easy to get turned away from what's long been a basic necessity -- protecting that valued data on one of today's most used mobile devices, the laptop. The big risk is usually theft or losing the portable device, so the focus has to be on ensuring that no matter whose hands it ends up in, those hands can't gain access to stored data or your network.

The first step is encrypting access -- full disk encryption is recommended thanks to its transparency. Several vendors are coming to market with new encryption approaches -- hardware level encryption -- which will also help the effort. Smart card technology is also another valuable option, as are biometric devices.

For more on securing lap top data:
- read this Newsfactor article [1]