- Joined
- May 12, 2011
- Messages
- 79
- Reaction score
- 3
- Points
- 8
- Location
- China
- Your Mac's Specs
- Mac OSX 10.7.3: MBP 15" Early 2011 2.0GHz i7, 8GB, 500GB 5400RPM
Hi,
Couple of months into the MBP and so far so good! I am about to go on holiday and have a few questions about security.
1. Hardware. As I understand it, if nasty person steals my MBP then, ignoring the data, he could simply start the computer with a system disc and reformat the hard drive and have a nice new computer? Apple has an option to install a firmware password which would prevent this but according to their support site this can be disabled by physical access to the inside of the computer, so is it worth the trouble? I am thinking of this as sort of a BIOS type password?
2. I currently use TrueCrypt which has served me well for years, for the relatively small number of files I need to encrypt, but I am conscious of the many posts recommending to use what comes with the machine- great advice so far. So I have read that I could use the disc utility to create a new image which would be encrypted? Is this actually a better way of doing things - TrueCrypt is excellent but can be a bit clunky? With TrueCrypt I can take it anywhere, could I put the disc image onto a thumb drive and open it from other Macs? I realise that I could encrypt the whole drive but this seems a bit over the top and wouldn't allow me to take a small number of encrypted files away... Some files I could simply encrypt using the option on Preview but I cannot find what level of encryption this is?
3. And finally(!) it has now occurred to me that my Time Machine backups are not encrypted. I do not see an option for encryption on the Time Machine preferences, - is there a way to do this without encrypting my MBP hard drive?
(Minor other thing. I was playing with Automator, having read an excellent post by lifeisabeach and have created a service - how do I delete it!!)
Thanks for the help!
Couple of months into the MBP and so far so good! I am about to go on holiday and have a few questions about security.
1. Hardware. As I understand it, if nasty person steals my MBP then, ignoring the data, he could simply start the computer with a system disc and reformat the hard drive and have a nice new computer? Apple has an option to install a firmware password which would prevent this but according to their support site this can be disabled by physical access to the inside of the computer, so is it worth the trouble? I am thinking of this as sort of a BIOS type password?
2. I currently use TrueCrypt which has served me well for years, for the relatively small number of files I need to encrypt, but I am conscious of the many posts recommending to use what comes with the machine- great advice so far. So I have read that I could use the disc utility to create a new image which would be encrypted? Is this actually a better way of doing things - TrueCrypt is excellent but can be a bit clunky? With TrueCrypt I can take it anywhere, could I put the disc image onto a thumb drive and open it from other Macs? I realise that I could encrypt the whole drive but this seems a bit over the top and wouldn't allow me to take a small number of encrypted files away... Some files I could simply encrypt using the option on Preview but I cannot find what level of encryption this is?
3. And finally(!) it has now occurred to me that my Time Machine backups are not encrypted. I do not see an option for encryption on the Time Machine preferences, - is there a way to do this without encrypting my MBP hard drive?
(Minor other thing. I was playing with Automator, having read an excellent post by lifeisabeach and have created a service - how do I delete it!!)
Thanks for the help!