While TrueCrypt is fairly transparent, the authors’ refusal to support TPM chips built into many laptops today is another benefit which BitLocker provides. In the case of TrueCrypt (a software I previously used years before with decent success) you are forced to install a program that requires additional configuration and another dependency that has to run in the background to negotiate the encryption/decryption process. There are numerous reasons why using native Windows functionality is beneficial over third party solutions.

Why is BitLocker better than alternatives like TrueCrypt or Seagate FDE drives? Since I feel this Windows feature could greatly benefit both technicians and customers alike, I’m sharing my own knowledge on the technology in this article. Call it ignorance or lack of self education, but I never took the chance to educate myself on how easy this technology was to employ and benefit from. I’ve personally come late to the game in using BitLocker, as I only turned the technology on when I switched my primary Thinkpad laptop to Windows 8 Pro last year. No special hardware, software, or user intervention needed. Since BitLocker is baked right into Windows Vista, 7, and 8, there is not much more a user has to do besides enable the technology and they’re set. While other options have been available as well, like the open-source TrueCrypt or Seagate’s FDE (Full Disk Encryption) line of laptop HDDs, all of these third party solutions add an extra layer of complexity that BitLocker avoids. Thanks to Windows BitLocker, which has been present in Windows since the release of Vista, seamless full drive encryption has been possible for quite a few years now. How many of these risks could be easily prevented? Most, if not all, of them as a matter of fact. Education and research workers have the highest risk of laptop loss at 10.85%.

There is a 7.12% chance that any laptop will be stolen during a 3.1 year lifespan.70% of lost laptops lack any form of security like encryption or anti-theft protections.Only 5% of lost laptops are ever recovered.There were some other interesting points from the Billion Dollar Lost Laptop study such as: In 2010, Intel released results from its ‘ Billion Dollar Lost Laptop Study‘ which found that, among 329 businesses/organizations studied, a collective average of $6.4 million worth of laptops were lost each year. The Ponemon Institute found in 2008 that 4800 laptops are lost every single day at USA airport checkpoints. If there’s something undeniable about the prevalence of mobile computing devices today, it’s that they are becoming increasingly vulnerable to loss and theft.

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