How to secure source files of a project?

Question

In my company, we are developing against a local server, we do not keep a copy of the file-base on our personal laptops given by the company, that we take home.

There are 2 problems with that:

1. We can't work remotely efficiently.
2. File search (find + quick find in NetBeans, which I use a lot) is very slow.

What options do I have of securing the source code on my laptop to save it from thieves / hackers that may or may not lay hands on my laptop?

Answer 1

I recommend TrueCrypt, as it's easy to use, free, open-source, and works both on Windows and Linux.

It encrypts/decrypts on the fly, with no temporary "plain text" files.

You can just create an encrypted container or encrypt an entire drive, but I suspect a file container is enough in your case, as you need to protect just the source code (ie httpdocs folder).

It has an option to automatically dismount the container when locking the computer (WIN+L on Windows) so you would also instantly be protected when you leave your laptop (at a client's location, for example).

• Choose one of the encryption methods (they're all strong encryption algorithms - I prefer AES, as it's faster and it's the current standard, but you can go with another one or a combination of 2-3 algos) and hashing method (I would suggest SHA-512 over the default RIPEMD-160)
• Make sure you use a strong password (master key) when creating the container
• And make sure to backup your container file if you plan to work for a while without commiting to SVN/Git. In case of hard-disk failure, encrypted data is harder to recover (if not impossible in some situations)

Answer 2

Well, one obvious option is to use the encryption. Keys used in modern crypto-tools are now long enough that it would take decades for some hacker to break it (I would assume here that you won't be a victim of NSA attack, even though they would probably have a hard time breaking a 1024 or 2048 bit key :-))

Which tool to choose mostly depends on your OS and budget. Good news is that there are many reliable free programs for such purpose, you can find lists of them here, here and here. Good luck.