Simple Data Security Solutions

[ Thanks to Naomi Graychase for this link. ]

"When I travel, my sensitive files are encrypted inside a TrueCrypt container. TrueCrypt is widely respected, widely used (at least by techies), free, open source, and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. But it does take a little work to use it. For non-techies, the process of creating secure containers, then mounting them and dismounting them may be too much.

"To make encryption as simple as possible for non-techies, some companies employ full disk encryption (FDE). Typically this only requires entering a password at system startup, thereafter, it requires no extra work on the part of the computer user. With full disk encryption, every byte on the hard drive is encrypted.

"This sounds great, at first. However, I don't think the internal hard drive of a computer should be fully encrypted, for many reasons. I discussed some of the reasons back in June when I blogged about the ThinkPad USB Secure Hard Drive from Lenovo. For example, nothing beats physical security, thus it's better to encrypt an external hard drive because it's smaller than any laptop and thus can go with you more places than a computer can."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Configuring Strong Wi-Fi (802.1X) Authentication in Linux, Part II(Dec 15, 2009)
• Better Wi-Fi Network Security: Advanced Techniques(Dec 10, 2009)
• 51 Open Source Tools to Protect Your Identity(Dec 03, 2009)
• GNOME Cleartext Passwords: Bug or Feature?(Nov 03, 2009)
• Just the Facts - Exporting Encryption Algorithms(Nov 02, 2009)
• Beware Open Source Encryption(Oct 26, 2009)
• Ubuntu's Encrypted Home Directory: A Canonical Approach to Data Privacy(Oct 23, 2009)