In article ,
Jake wrote:

The only real point in
password protecting home computers is if you have children or
other people who you don't trust.

No, if, like me, you work from home, you also guard against theft. And
if you're dealing with classified stuff you cannot "trust" your
nearest and dearest. Strong (third party not MS) encryption systems,
failed logon countdowns and so on plus physical security.

You either misunderstood what I said, or the security guarantees
you are relying on.

Yes, I can protect against someone copying my hard disk and
analysing the data on it, but a simple login password would
play no part in that. At the VERY least, you need to encrypt
the whole of your system with a boot password, which causes
major trouble if you forget it :-)

Remember that it is trivial to reboot from a mountable device,
copy the hard disk, and look at it at leisure or run it under
an emulator. Block THAT, and you are also disabling any real
chance of recovery from hardware failure.

That is one of the main reasons that most organisations with
classified material forbid it to be worked on at home, under
pain of immediate dismissal. There are exceptions, but any
effective protection against physical access is HARD.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.