I know you have a bunch of Chrome tabs open with things you keep meaning to get back to.

One segment of Digital Forensics is “live” forensics- capturing data and processes that disappear once a machine is shut down.  Malware, for example, may come and go with a system restart.

The first time I traveled to San Fransisco for work, my rental car was broken into.  Everything I wasn’t carrying on my person was stolen, including my laptop.  It would be a good year before I learned that a system that hasn’t been powered down stores recent information in the RAM.  Why should anyone care?  Well, because if you typed any passwords or credit card numbers since the last time you shut your computer down, it is stored in the RAM until cleared by powering down.  Those are only two examples of information you don’t want compromised.  We won’t mention someone’s text file they had open, with all of their passwords in the text file (that actually wasn’t me, but it happened).

In addition, some hard drives and optical drives can be damaged if your computer isn’t completely shut down while you’re moving it.  Also, some software updates only take effect when you restart your system.  I won’t go into nitty gritty detail about the way hackers can get your data if you don’t shut your system down.

Cardinal rule:  shut your system down anytime you’re traveling or you’ll be away from it and you think your information could be compromised.