Laptop security precautions make users nuts. It all comes down this plaintive cry: “Why can’t I connect?” Or perhaps the better question is, why isn’t it easier to connect? Between passwords, screen locks, complicated procedures to log onto virtual private networks and the risk of getting booted off an “insecure” Wi-Fi connection, well, it’s not always easy for users to get online just anywhere.

And that’s as it should be, says Greg Fay, chief information security officer for the State of Iowa, who admits he gets lots of practice trying to justify this stance. Although Iowa is not guarding trade secrets, “there is always something we’re doing that we wouldn’t like the media to know about until it’s ready to go.”

To address these security concerns, the State of Iowa is just a few months away from implementing a statewide standard a preboot, full-disk encryption for every laptop that it hopes will beef up security. But Fay doesn’t think that will solve the issue of his users wanting to log on at Starbucks, a desire he tries to squelch as much as possible. Even with the full-disk encryption, an open Wi-Fi network still isn’t guaranteed safe, he feels, and his users “just don’t seem to understand that.”

Laptop users are in denial, agrees Applied Materials’ Archibald, who quotes from a recent user e-mail that asked, “We’re not building nuclear bombs here, why do I have to type in so many passwords?”

Many laptop users don’t understand that data in transit needs to be protected, unlike data at rest, Fay says, and they really don’t want to understand it. They just want to be able to do what they want.

“To make our lives easier, we want a technology solution to security problems, not a user one,” Fay says, meaning he’s more than ready to stop wrangling with users about what they can and can’t do on their laptops while out in public. A technology solution, one that would take the onus off the users and presumably, off the IT call center would be the way to go.

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