With cyber crime increasing and more data breaches hitting the headlines. It’s now more than ever you need to check your business’ cyber security practices. One practice is, encrypting hard drives, this will add an extra layer of protection on devices that store confidential data.
FileVault is Mac OS default encryption software. Follow this simple guide to activate your encryption on your hard drive to ensure well protected data.
Step by Step Guide:
1 – Go to Apple menu, click system preferences and choose security & privacy
2 – Click FileVault tab
3 – Click Turn on FileVault
4 – If you have other users on your mac, a message might appear stating each user just type their password in before they will unlock the disk. Click the Enable User button and enter the user’s password.
5 – Choose if you want to link your icloud account to FileVault to unlock the disk or create a recovery key.
6 – Finally, restart to reboot your Mac
Why You Should Encrypt Your Hard Drive
If employees are using laptops and taking them out of the office, there’s a risk of the laptop being accessed by an outsider of the business or stolen. Without encryption anyone can find, open, edit and download any files. Encryption on the hard drive will make it impossible for anyone to access files without the password or security key. It simply adds an extra layer of protection on devices storing sensitive information.
Allowing all employees of a business to view all files is a security risk. Limiting access to employees who can view the files will mitigate the risk of any data being leaked causing a data breach.
Disk disposal, having data encrypted will ensure a safe and secure disposal of a disk/device whether it be selling the device on or complete disposal. No data will be leaked or accessible to anyone else without the encryption key.
If your business uses Windows then look at our previous blog to find out how to set your encryption up.
For those who want confirmation of MacOS security posture, organisations can undertake a CIS Benchmark for Apple MacOS.