Either you or the company you work for are taking huge risks by pretending your laptop is secure if whole disk encryption is not being used to protect sensitive data, trade secrets, or financial information.

Here are some common misconceptions, and the reason why they are mistakes:

We use encrypted partitions.

• All it takes is accidentally saving critical data to the wrong partition and it is easily accessible when your laptop falls into the wrong hands.

We use strong system passwords and have password protected screen savers and a policy that automatically locks the console after a certain period of inactivity.

• There are numerous publicly available password cracking utilities that can be used, during system boot, which easily crack Windows passwords.  Once the passwords are cracked, utilities can be run which will search for VPN passwords, dialup passwords, network passwords, logon passwords, wireless encryption keys, etc...

We use laptop tracking devices, so if the laptop is lost or stolen, it will be located and eventually recovered.

• Too late...  System data is already in the hands of the bad guys.

As you can see from the examples above, the solutions come nowhere near 100% laptop security.  If, however, whole disk encryption was utilized with a strong passphrase, none of the methods above would be possible as the thief would not be able to get past the encryption passphrase.