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holman / ama

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Encryption: harddrives and backups? #273

Closed dplarson closed 11 years ago

dplarson commented 11 years ago

Any thoughts on encryption of harddrives and backups (to protect work/private data)? Is it necessary? Advice for best practices (e.g. is FileVault worthwhile for a system with a SSD)?

agh commented 11 years ago

I'm pretty sure Apple supports the AES-NI instruction sets, which makes the overhead significantly less of a concern. I've used it with everything from OS X Lion onwards. Always with SSD. No issues to report and tools like Blackmagic suggest the hit on performance is really, really minimal making it a no brainer for me.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1207873

There's a huge amount of personal information on any laptop. It's a portable device. It can be lost or stolen easily too. If the overhead is minimal, should the question not be, "Why would you not encrypt your laptop?". :smile:

Just my :thought_balloon: and you may not agree!

dplarson commented 11 years ago

Thanks for the reference @agh

holman commented 11 years ago

We always do encryption at GitHub- it's kind of a requirement of having a machine with any company-related code or keys to have full disk encryption on. FileVault is pretty great. I can't think of a reason not to in this era, especially if you're toting machines around between locations... way too easy to lose or get your gear stolen that it's just irresponsible towards your yourself not to.

dplarson commented 11 years ago

Does the same go with backups to external hard drives? Or do you use something else besides Time Machine + FileVault?

Also, thanks :+1:

holman commented 11 years ago

Yup. I encrypt all my external hard drives- I used to use Disk Utility to create an encrypted drive, but I think the latest Time Machine in Mountain Lion handles that for you now.