September is traditionally the ‘new year’ for students. It marks the beginning of the academic year and, for first year students, it is a whole new adventure. One of the things that will make the academic year less stressful is a secure laptop. That machine will be with you constantly while you are on campus. Here are three habits to develop from Day One of the school year:

• partition: The hard drive on the laptop may offer massive storage. It comes as a single drive on a new laptop. There are advantages to partitioning this drive. It will make the laptop more secure and more efficient. Mitch Tulloch offers a full discussion on the issue of partitioning.
• do not always operate the laptop as an administrator: You may be the only one using the laptop. However, that does not mean that you need to be logged onto the machine with administrative rights. DropMyRights is a freeware program that can limit the damage that malware can do if some malicious programming does penetrate your laptop security. All that it takes to put your laptop in danger is just one careless click. And everyone of us rushes, multitasks and has moments of carelessness. Consider something like DropMyRights as a preventative measure.
• encrypt: If you have something that is on the laptop that you do not want anyone else to access, encrypt it. Encryption is not difficult. There are free programs, like LockNote from Steganos, that can protect your confidential data. To have your bank identifier in an open file, for example, is simply foolish and a needless risk. If you put data like that on your laptop, encrypt it. And store your encryption password in a safe physical location - and not in a laptop file.

These are just three basic suggestions. The reason for presenting just three is that there might be a greater possibility that these suggestions will become routine security procedures, if they do not appear overwhelming. Others may have other safe-practice recommendations. Just remember that the laptop data become more and more important as the academic semester speeds along.

Catherine Forsythe