May 2008 Archives

As we all should, I worry about how to protect data on my laptop, especially when I travel.  I use a Mac, and have had some experience with FileVault that makes me want to look at alternatives.  I think I found an interesting one.  It is called TrueCrypt.  It does not encrypt a whole volume, nor does it make you partition you volume to make encrypted volume images.  You make encrypted containers by creating encrypted files that TrueCrypt mounts as if they were disk volumes.  Encrypting content is quite easy - you just move files or folders into the mounted container, and it is automatically encrypted.  It is not perfect, but there are some endearing features:

• TrueCrypt is open source and free
• It works for Mac, Linux and Windows
• It looks like it does a good jot encrypting - though I'm not an expert

I'll be back with more detail, but for now, I've put everything that might possibly be sensitive into encrypted containers, including my Thunderbird email.  I'll be traveling with that laptop next week, so I'll know better how it worked by the time I get back.

 Al W.