Risk Analysis

What are trying to protect?: Think about what's important to you and what you need to keep safe. Think about what resources you own and how important each resource is to you. Each resource probabaly has a different value.

How much is it worth to you?: Think about how much each resource is worth to you. Your private email is probably worth a lot more to you than some CS lab you worked on last semester.

How much is it worth to others?: Your resources might be worth quite a bit to others. For example credit card numbers or bank accounts would be very valuable to an attacker. Steamy email messages can be extremely useful to a would-be blackmailer. Your high-speed dorm connection would be very valuable as a hidden warez site.

How much would it cost to replace that resource?: If you have reliable backups you don't tend to worry as much about someone nuking your hard drive as you would if you didn't have any backups.; The replacement cost of trade secrets can be very high because of all the research that goes into development of technology.