Carrying sensitive data on a laptop is a dangerous, but often necessary aspect of working in the digital age. A stolen laptop is the biggest liability, but forgetting to log off while stepping out of the office gives others of window of opportunity to copy your files onto a thumb drive.
The easiest way to protect data on a Mac is with an encrypted folder. An encrypted folder cannot be opened without entering the correct password, and files within the folder will not be visible to anyone running a Spotlight search. There are encryption programs that can do this - such as TrueCrypt -- but with a Mac, third-party software is unnecessary.
The best method for securing files is an encrypted disc image, which can be created quickly and easily in Mac without having to install anything.
- To get started, open Disk Utility, located in Applications > Utilities.
- Choose New > Blank Disc Image. A dialog box will open; you'll need to choose the options you'd like for your image. Enter a name to save it as -- something entirely uninteresting is ideal. The goal is to make the file as normal-looking as possible; give it a name that is boring, but wouldn't seem out of place on your computer.
- Once named, specify a saving location in the next drop down box. Choose a disc image size, the recommended encryption setting (AES-128), and choose "sparse disk image" as the format of choice.
- Click the "create" button, and a password prompt will appear. Enter the password you would like to use for the disc image - make it completely random, using both letters and numbers. If the prompt doesn't feel your password is secure enough, it will offer advice on how to improve it. Note that once a password has been assigned, it is impossible to recover that password should you forget it.
- If you're sure you entered the password correctly, choose the "ok" button. The disc image will be finished and saved to the location you choose. To open the encrypted image, double-click and enter the password when prompted to access the files.
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