How Fedora protects your data with full disk encryption

[ Thanks to Fini Decima for this link. ]

"Disk encryption in one of the most overlooked and underused security tools in computing. When most people think about securing a computer or the operating system that powers it, a firewall, anti-virus, and other anti-malware software comes to mind. Those are all good and necessary tools, but they are only concerned with network security. What about physical security? What happens if someone gains unauthorized, physical access to your computer? Even with all the fancy firewall and other network security tools running, If the disk is not encrypted, check mate! Your data is now shared.

"In Linux, there are kernelspace and userland applications for encrypting partitions and directories. You could opt to configure disk encryption on a running system, but I very much prefer to do that during installation. When encrypting a disk, it is better to encrypt the whole disk rather than just the home directory or the swap space. Very few Linux distributions provide a facility to configure full disk encryption during installation. Fedora is one of those few, and no distro that I’ve used or reviewed makes it as easy and as simple as Fedora’s implementation."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Data Recovery in the event of your Death(Jan 29, 2010)
• Privacy Bill Nears Introduction in House(Jan 29, 2010)
• Setting up an SSL Certificate in Apache(Jan 26, 2010)
• Free and Open Source Encryption Software for Linux(Jan 18, 2010)
• New GSM encryption cracked(Jan 15, 2010)
• What to Do When Your Laptop is Stolen(Jan 13, 2010)
• Securely Encrypt Removable Media with Ubuntu(Jan 12, 2010)
• Is your secure USB flash drive really secure?(Jan 12, 2010)