How Disk Encryption Protects Your Company’s Information and Your Personal Computer

Encryption is a difficult concept to grasp, but it’s a necessary part of protecting your company's confidential data. At a very basic level, encryption is the process of scrambling text (called ciphertext) so that it’s unreadable to unauthorized users. You can encrypt individual files, folders, volumes, or entire disks within a computer, as well as USB flash drives and files stored in the cloud. If you always wanted to feel like a secret agent, here’s your chance!

You can encrypt your hard drive to protect the data on your computer and it’s a good way to secure your information, whether at home or on the move with a laptop.

From a business perspective, all organizations, including small and midsize businesses (SMBs), that collect personally identifiable information (PII) like names, birthdates, Social Security numbers and financial information must secure that information. An organization can be sued if a computer containing PII is stolen and the information is leaked or shared.

If a laptop is lost or stolen and the files or disk aren't encrypted, a thief can easily steal the information, so it's a good practice to encrypt your sensitive data, if not your entire hard drive

Setting up encryption scrambles your data so that only authorized parties can understand the information. Without the encryption key, anyone trying to read your information would see gibberish.

You’re already using encryption when you visit any "https" website. The lock symbol beside the URL shows that encryption is protecting your connection with the site. You’ll see it when shopping or banking online, and it’s protecting the data in transit.

You can also encrypt the data on your computers.

Protecting your passwords will no longer suffice.

Many people at this point have a password for their user account on a home computer or laptop. Some of these passwords are even complicated, although the number-one password people use continues to be “123456” – seriously – followed by “123456789” and “qwerty.”

Regardless of its strength, the logon password doesn’t stop anyone with physical access. You might have your browser remembering usernames and passwords (it’s not a shared computer, right?), and anyone with access can use those pre-populated credentials to access your accounts.

If someone really wants to get to password-protected files on a physical device, they can do so. The attacker might bypass your password by booting your computer up to a new operating system. Or the bad guy might even remove your hard drive and put it into a new computer. All they need is a second computer and a screwdriver!

Full disk encryption protects those files, even if the attacker has physical access and even if your laptop is lost or stolen, your home is burglarized, someone seizes your computers.

Encryption isn’t a silver bullet.

Of course, we need to be clear. Encrypting your hard disk doesn’t make your computer invincible to cyberattackers, although does force them to work a lot harder.

Attackers can also still exploit services running on your computer, such as network file sharing. Plus, encryption doesn’t stop a nefarious agency from spying on your online activity in transit.

Nevertheless, it does beef up your physical security. You can encrypt an external hard drive or your system’s entire hard drive. Then, when you turn the computer on, you’ll need to unlock the disk to boot up your operating system. The computer won’t work until the user supplies the encryption key or passphrase. You can also create multiple unlocking keys if you have several user accounts for that device.

Again, you’re going to want to come up with a strong password. If your key phrase is “password,” (the fourth most common choice in 2019), there's little point in encryption.

You also don’t want to walk away from your laptop, leaving it open and accessible. You’ll want to set your encryption program to lock again after a certain amount of idle time. Otherwise, you’ll find encryption doesn’t impact your computer’s performance.

Make sure your computers and laptops are always physically secure. With disk encryption, only people you trust can access your data and files.

Ready to set up disk encryption on your devices? We can help. Give us a call today at 305 400 0992, or drop us a line via email, hello@zakini.com.