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I have the standard W8, I know it doesn't come with bitlocker but I'm trying to encrypt my HD and it won't let me! Where it says in Property's "Encrypt content to secure data" Its not highlighting so I can't click on it! Anyone have any idea why its not highlighting, I'm i doing something wrong? Thnks!
If you have Win 8 Basic you won't have Bitlocker it is a Professional and Enterprise version feature. Couple other possibilities are that your hardware does not support encryption or the feature is not installed.
I have been tech since Berkeley, 1986 and I can honestly say if you have a drive that is over a year old DON'T ENCRYPT IT!
Makes data recovery (all drives fail eventually) impossible! Use strong passwords.
Actually thats not true... and if you are such a super tech then you should know that you shouldn't be recovering data from the encrytped drive you should be restoring it from the backups.
Down boy! LOL but you do have a point. You aren't supposed to do data recovery on an encrypted drive as that would defeat the purpose.Quote:
Originally Posted by nunob
Side note, there are still old versions of PGP that work out there from what I understand but I never researched it, and if you want to encrypt the whole drive you can use TrueCrypt. (don't use TrueCrypt on a SSD, if you lose the PW it is unable to be formatted and you have a bricked SSD)
Overall, I believe that drive encryption creates more potential problems than it prevents. I'm a strong believer in the concept that physical security is more important in securing data or system access than any software.
So, if you have data that really needs to be secure, I'd put it on some removable storage that I could lock up in a safe. If you are mobile and need frequent access to your data (and you don't trust cloud storage) pendrives secured with TrueCrypt or IronKey pendrives are decent alternatives. And it goes without saying that you shouldn't be storing any passwords in your browser if you have security concerns. I store my passwords in a physical card file and on a pendrive if I might need them on a job site.
In other words, I would focus less on trying to secure the drive, and more on securing the data. I've been in the business a long time, and I've seen many more instances of encrypted files and data biting users in the *** than security breaches.
Quote:
Originally Posted by slgrieb
I believe what SL is saying is, forget using TrueCrypt and secure your drive with Mossberg 500!
Actually, I'm thinking more "fire safe" and less "fire arm". All the same, if someone has physical access to a drive, it can always be copied or simply stolen. In either event, the data can be cracked given sufficient motivation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niclo Iste
Back in the days before Texas state law required you to have the equivalent of a private investigator's licence to do forensic data recovery, I hacked my fair share of encrypted data, including cracking a password protected spreadsheet that contained payroll info for our police department. The PD hack was pretty interesting, because the city staff member who encrypted the data literally fell over and died before he could document his work. The spreadsheet had a 14 letter password, so it took a while to break, but it still cost the city less than recovering the data from paper records.
So, I guess we might add "unexpected death by massive heart attack" to this list of reasons why data encryption isn't always a good plan. All the same, what took several hours to accomplish with old hardware and software can be done in a few minutes today without specialized hardware.