Chromebooks are many things: affordable, easy to use, modern… But have you considered Chromebooks as one of the most secure laptops for sensitive personal information?

Oh yes. There are many good points to bring up when talking about security and Chromebooks. However, for the sake of simplicity and your attention span , I’m only going to name a few of more important ones.

Google Account Security With Added Comfort

Let’s start with the obvious. A Chromebook is a cloud-based laptop, which means most of your files are going to be saved on Google’s servers. This, by itself, is already a big security boost. It is much more likely for a person who knows how your file system works to access your local files on a Mac or a Windows computer than to breach Google’s data centers.

Google takes the security of your files very seriously, but all of this is in vain if your password to your Google account happens to be your cat’s name followed by your birth year. Fortunately, there are many useful ways to help you keeping your information safe. right in your Google Account settings: two-step password verification. When turned on, Google will text you a secret pin code whenever someone (hopefully you) is trying to log into your Google Account. This pin will be required before access is granted.

This is a good place to mention that Chromebook users get a bonus: Smart Lock. Smart Lock lets you log into Chromebook whenever your phone is unlocked. For me, this means that Instead of remembering a 20 character password, I can just reach into my pocket and press my finger to my Nexus 5X’s fingerprint sensor to unlock my Chromebook. Even better: since my phone is programmed to be unlocked at home, it means my Chromebook is automatically unlocked at home also. Indirectly, my Chromebook “knows” it’s in my home and remains unlocked for me. Fantastic!

A Chromebook is Designed for Restricted Access

Let’s get a bit more technical. When you take your brand new Chromebook out of the box, you are using the “stable” channel of the Chromebook’s Operating System, Chrome OS. The importance of this will become clear in the next few lines. Your Chromebooks also encrypts all your local files by default. Unlike most Mac and Windows laptops out there.

When Another person logs into your Chromebook (say, your sibling or a friend) and uses their account, they can’t see your files. It’s as if they are invisible.

Chrome OS verifies its integrity (a process called verified boot) upon every start up. The Chromebook will simply not start if something seems “fishy” with the system. Instead, it will inform you the OS is damaged, and ask you to perform system recovery, which will delete all local files and settings and restore the Chromebook to its default settings.

The only way to poke around and mess with a Chromebook’s system is by switching it from the stable, default stable channel to developer mode, which is also called insecure mode, exactly for this reason. While it is relatively easy to access the developer mode, The process completely wipes out the hard drive. Not only that, since developer mode is another version of the OS, it is downloaded and written over the previous system files. In a way the process which is somewhat similar to “secure erase” on Macs and Windows machines. This makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to retrieve data from the hard drive this way.

This was a bit of technical, so let’s recap the last couple of points:

On a Chromebook, most of your files are not saved on the Chromebook anyway, but on Google’s secure servers Files that are saved locally are encrypted on the Chromebook's hard drive by default If someone tries to tamper with the system (by switching to developer mode), the Chromebook will automatically erase all local files and write over them with the new version of the Chrome OS. Nothing will remain.

On a Mac or on a Windows machine, the folders and even the files of one user are available for other users to see (but not access) if they know where they are located. If a user gains superuser privileges (also known as root), they have access to all the files on the computer. Not only that, they can manipulate them any way they want and prevent from the original user from ever seeing them again. Such features simply do not exist on Chrome OS — unless, again, developer mode is on.

if you’re still not convinced, or just want to view more of the security features built into Chromebooks, take a look at the additional features mentioned here.

Who’s Going to Steal a Chromebook?

Chromebooks still suffer from a bad reputation as cheap plasticky computers meant for school students. While definitely true, this is not the entirely true. Many Chromebooks out there, especially recently, are made of quality materials and hardware that can be compared to the top laptops out there. As a matter of fact, the best Chromebook, the Chromebook Pixel, is up to par with the Macbook pro, and can even surpass its hardware.

Surprised? So will be most people out there, including those who might want to steal your laptop. A Chromebook is not likely to attract as many eyeballs as a Mac, and that’s a good thing. I feel pretty confident leaving my Chromebook behind for a moment when I go to the bathroom at Starbucks. The Chromebook requires me to sign in again when I’m back at my seat (or unlock my phone). Unlike a Mac or a Windows machine, no one can attempt a “recovery” or boot from a USB and hack into my account.

Final Thoughts

While it’s relatively simple to secure data on a laptop by encrypting the hard drive (in both modern versions of Windows and Mac OS), it’s still up to the user to find these options and turn them on.

Many potential buyers, especially those who believe the hype and purchase a Mac because of Apple’s recent reputation for privacy, will be shocked to discover that all the content on their hard drive is easily accessible to anyone with another Mac and a thunderbolt cable. Indeed, privacy and security can be very different.

Chromebooks are secure out of the box. While most Windows and Mac users are generally used to save files locally on their computers, Chromebook users just don’t leave much information on the laptop. This means that even if the hard drive is somehow accessed, the chances of finding something useful for the attacker are slim, simply because there’s nothing there to begin with.

I hope this article helped you learn a thing or two about Chromebooks. If you have any question about anything written here, feel free to contact me and ask questions. In the meantime, go grab yourself a Chromebook if you don’t already have one, and use it on your next trip.