The case of Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam shows a corporate security crack that shouldn't happen in this day and age. In the Rajaratnam case, government wiretaps served as vital evidence against him. The question though, is that, if the government is able to do that on a multi-billion dollar company without them knowing, what about their competitors or enemies with ill-intent? With all the resources available to them, how can something so old-school like this happen to a hedge fund? Secrecy and conspiracy shouldn't be unfamiliar in the hedge fund industry. So I had assumed that they operated inside an iron wall. Government wiretapping or corporate espionage are certainly not my worry. However, I still try to employ prudent security procedures in the financial quantitative research and development that I do at Quantisan Systems just because I value my intellectual property. For example, in my email correspondence with business associates, I make use of GPG with a 2048-bit RSA asynchronous key pair. (my public key is below) GPG is an open-source equivalent of Pretty Good Privacy. It is most likely that your email client supports it too. I use Thunderbird and it is a built-in feature. You just need to enable it and set it up. On voice communications, I prefer to use Skype rather than regular voice calls because it's free and Skype inherently uses 256-bit AES encryption. So no setup is even required for this added security. For my important files, I place them in a TrueCrypt volume encrypted with 256-bit AES encryption. The encrypted container is synchronized to my Dropbox account so that I can use it anywhere while ensuring security. TrueCrypt is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's only a matter of following the installation instructions to safeguard your files from prying eyes. All of these encryption tools are open-source and free. I configured them to work in the background and they don't hinder my work flow at all. It is certainly not a sophisticated setup, yet it isn't too dingy either. At the very least, if someone is to steal my notebook computer, an ordinary crook wouldn't be able to gain access to my sensitive information. In view of the fact that Quantisan Systems is just an one-man operation with practically no resource available, I can't believe security at some financial companies is worse than this homebrew setup. -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) mQENBE1Ul0gBCACZGqPoYrzRF9YcuUvMeES+etPUAeNQ6uvw42k7Sf1ydBp3lFGQ ggYnOsmQ8Nf/62sB9CoYkAV+h+CPTuTOT5N4gwTojtPX3bIrjA6JgTDpt7bpwyMM j+mnZboXdBgZwz1xqiB38Oj51OBYPPLbTc/YphYfjXEuO4tQwsQufd5dvJqF+Yse CGeLRroJt9EmGVYW/NaCEBKHaMnD9gkDyWLxm7GFQYhl7ZWU+VQXjBxzZyYtpup2 s1N5/igjiRj8t5CGnMwrG2yZkPW+n8m5sTLjcHWFY9OxiqFRaYgm9Vk3mVhxE5ML DPtSPySF+KkyIFxeL78MscU2W1DMH5pNM/+fABEBAAG0HVBhdWwgTGFtIDxwYXVs QHF1YW50aXNhbi5jb20+iQE+BBMBAgAoBQJNVJdIAhsjBQkFo5qABgsJCAcDAgYV CAIJCgsEFgIDAQIeAQIXgAAKCRD8QV1yPcrlhIphB/9cxkbWJ+19axfZxFYRE1u4 Gq1p5/hkm3990yT8kc+4Qg7xa2cm+SgBmEnAy24xdQpR/Up/EF13D15ZBiE1SG+D 0+EUZp4Ir5+TTuTrmJxKRb56IgFZVXP9KatNuK3aPvNFl4gZUZUZHmvUvvBzqtSM HrfzjmuirXVKI6M5WPZchLNUGE1sDtR2SR7l+rjvcPTehaJf+9srK1gsl3Vb3Pzo D5/JBoNK1ueDpfRxNhdryCUQr2uJ1pWLgauDz0iSRPOczV8x1n+051DJQXHx16tY I0VOErTVxscE/KeuuiiFwOwSLteIMDIY2vg6KuUw3cQxxMcfeNTu+jTJXuroib+O uQENBE1Ul0gBCAD05TZ2/oF1Lb8ggg9nKlgB+ZXWBVCc9CNlguZpZAmC7ezc72qT gSho/5+3ldEqvA1AxnWubaWV26QLL2fNybKd1DG9uYOsnOwx6L5H8toQswcurC9y 3jKVQSpuIJrsrQiTT3aIZ3ZONGsg0k0D+ZiMC9qSLmFXh3f2fio5QsyRsEWlC9Qj CDXrgpNZqpDegMvvRXXJfRGulh4sMTGXrxE2pXI/+9Hv64+BuBMkixA7UwiOBQbd V5GkVm7V2hvgQpLc2QaXofLdBVIda6hvUuU/BK5m7HShNPKc21VgcSbYFOggYDal efTeFdCfHEg08ND8JSa2Bv+fdEmOFjPF5Z9hABEBAAGJASUEGAECAA8FAk1Ul0gC GwwFCQWjmoAACgkQ/EFdcj3K5YTRxAf8DspugdiTZUxIT/1EAa/0GWpsT8YZmITm 0iUebID3jZRLXpyqfDr9KUZvk6IMYru1h6c6pZdzY4IJ/p/sZ+p2gtLr1pmOqEjd W94Q3adtjH/42zauFOdCzamtbc7Q5cJTIeAFcvFsVqDLWkK1vWiUhqUoacgN6TWS MActe4B7hYdcMWsbj4j3xVoGkkiJOL81/MJW9f/xDqcNbLsiEK7DxOaWUb2CkuUl 7c/VVaSuWFBKGsj2fgEoTErfsmhjMm+WUcoE1Zjn2UwJzxxIcfzj3A0IEvMIua6u UJWnKv8t55G9f+NQ3yrKtPC/+O7N1sCSilmB/IekaSrBX9KvZgHM8Q== =DjK6 -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----