[Macpartners] Macpartners Digest, Vol 73, Issue 2

[Andrew Munchbach]

Hi David-

If you don't mind paying a few dollars Knox for OS X helps to automate the expanding encrypted disk image process. 

http://www.knoxformac.com/

Store those encrypted disk images in a Drop Box folder and you have an automated and encrypted backup solution. 

http://www.getdropbox.com

Pros: you have portable encrypted files that can be opened on any Mac. There is no public/private key to worry about. 

Cons: you have a single file that provides a vector for someone to attempt to break your encryption scheme. 

Good luck,
Andrew
Andrew M. 
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----- Original Message -----
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To: macpartners at mit.edu <macpartners at mit.edu>
Sent: Wed Jun 03 12:12:22 2009
Subject: Macpartners Digest, Vol 73, Issue 2

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Today's Topics:

   1. disk encryption (David Schloerb)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 13:20:59 -0400
From: David Schloerb <schloerb at MIT.EDU>
Subject: [Macpartners] disk encryption
To: macpartners at MIT.EDU
Message-ID: <p06230900c64b06025d99@[192.168.1.107]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"

Hi All,

I am looking for an easy way to protect some of the data on my Mac G4 
computers (office desktop and home laptop) running OS 10.4.11, plus a 
portable hard disk that I carry with me. I think the solution is to 
use Disk Utility to create encrypted disk images for the small number 
of things that need protection, but I would like to know more about 
the pros and cons of this approach (and other options) before I start 
doing it.

Please let me know if you have any wisdom about this that you would 
like to share.

My main concerns are:

1) It needs to be easy to set up, use, and maintain.

2) I want to keep things like my SS number out of the wrong hands in 
the event that my computers or hard disk are lost or stolen--I'm not 
worried about the NSA or a supper hacker so much as a thief who might 
use my personal data if it was obvious.

3) I don't want to be locked out of my data in the future because the 
software is no longer around to support reading my files!

4) Although, encrypting the entire disk has some appeal (e.g., PGP or 
TrueCrypt), some of my work is computationally intensive (e.g., 
analysis of experimental data) and I don't want to slow it down with 
an encryption layer. Also, as I am currently in the midst of dealing 
with some OS problems, my guess is that encryption of the OS would 
make recovery from such problems much harder.

Thanks,

David


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End of Macpartners Digest, Vol 73, Issue 2
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