The problem: Petty thieves love laptops. They're valuable, lightweight, and easy to sell. In one widely reported incident in May, the burglary of a Veterans Affairs employee's home resulted in the disappearance of a laptop and external hard drive containing personal information about more than 25 million veterans and active-duty military personnel.

The solution: Microsoft's new Vista operating system will offer an AES-based hard-drive encryption scheme called BitLocker to protect stored files. Software from Pointsec will encrypt an entire hard drive, changing the Windows or Linux login screen to demand a password each time the machine is awakened or rebooted.