Network crypto is not enough: One example of why.

[mmotyka at lsil.com]

>A few days ago, someone mugged one of our tech writers outside her 
>apartment building. 
>
>She had a laptop computer that was company property, and which 
>contained among other things, an application the company licenses 
>...
><yank>
>...
>The BIOS password protection is garbage for protecting hard drive 
>contents - the hard drives are unencrypted and can just be popped 
>out and stuck into a different laptop of the same model.
>
>                                Bear
>
An ancient and revered topic. If you start to pursue the paranoid trains
of thought that haunt the subject you'll see that you probably shouldn't
even have the key entered via the laptop's chipset if you really want
the disk to be useless when removed. Which points to the need for a lump
in the ribbon cable with a HW key + lengthy PIN.

Mike