We might take security for granted, until the worst actually happens. Imagine your deepest of secrets, personal documents, or intellectual property you’ve been working on for months being stolen without a trace left behind. Mac’s may not catch viruses, but they’re definitely not safeguarded from an attack from a hacker or perhaps someone who nabs your Mac at the airport. Here’s a little series that will keep your data only in places you want it to be. Let’s start with the core of what’s important: Data.
Files and Folders
Most of our computer work is saved to files. It could be financial records in a spreadsheet, a design job in a series of Photoshop documents, or maybe some personal pictures you don’t want scattered across the web. Safeguarding data by means of encryption is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and it seems to work pretty well. Mac OS X allows you to create highly encrypted disk images which can be used to store any form of data in an easily accessible form. We’ve even done a guide on how exactly to go about it. Third party developers have stepped up and made this process even simpler such that encryption and security remains transparent to the user.
FileVault
A tool built into OS X, is FileVault. This encrypts your entire home folder, while remaining totally transparent to the user. All you have to do is go to System Preferences > Security > FileVault and turn it on. You’re protected by two passwords, so if you forget the lower level password, you can reset it with the master password. Make sure you don’t lose it though, as there’s no way to crack a FileVault volume once it’s locked. I would also advice you to backup your data, since there have been reports of users being locked for no reason at all. As for the performance hit, FileVault locks and unlocks the home folder during login and logout, and uses very little resources during operation itself. Here’s “An Unencrypted look at File Vault” to help you understand what exactly File Vault means for your data.
Espionage
The best tool that I’ve tried so far is Espionage from The Tao Effect. This simple tool allows you to easily encrypt any files or folders with a simple user interface. Once it’s locked, the contents of that file are completely safe from any hack (that is, until the hacker knows your password). You can even lock application data such as Mail messages or iChat conversations. The performance hit is negligeable and for $25 a piece I’d consider this application highly recommended for any serious Mac user.
FileLock
Another simple tool for locking up bits of data, FileLock goes ahead and pushes the encryption to 448-bit blowfish. I’m not sure if the average person requires that much of encryption, but more the merrier. The resultant encrypted file (which is checked for data integrity) can be sent via email without fear of being cracked. The files can be opened on any computer with FileLock installed, even via a contextual Finder plugin. It’s not nearly as feature rich as Espionage, but I suppose those extra bits in encryption made it worth the mention. At CAD25, it’s a fairly average deal.
Data Integrity
While files and folders are important on your Mac, little bits of data are sometimes even more crucial to keeping your secrets close. Credit Card information, passwords to email accounts, and all kinds of digital notes can reveal information that’s too dangerous to even imagine.
1Password
The grand daddy of password managers, 1Password is the most robust data security tool on the Mac. Used by a majority of Mac users, Agile has really polished this tool. It will automatically fill in web forms for you, generate highly complicated passwords for different sites, and can even store credit card information, secure notes, and bits of data in its one bit database. All this is unlocked with one single password, hence the name. 1Password costs $40 for a single user license, and $70 for a family pack. It’s not the cheapest, but will go a long way in keeping your data secure, and your internet browsing experience as fun as possible.
SecretBox
A relatively new application from App4Mac, Secret box allows you to store bits of arbitrary information in its secure database. You can store passwords, software licenses, notes, bookmarks, credit card info, all secure in its 256bit encrypted database. The feature that I find most interesting, is that whenever you access a certain piece of data, only that small bit is decrypted, leaving the rest of the database locked tight. At $40 a license however, I’d say just go with the more tried and tested 1Password.
File Erasing
While Mac OS X has a secure erase feature on OS X, it’s not very helpful when you need to destroy a single file or folder. You have to either securely empty the entire trash (Finder > Secure Empty Trash) or nothing. If you want to make sure your already deleted data doesn’t show up, you can launch disk utility, and secure wipe the free space of a partition (either 1 time, 7 times, or 35 times depending on how badly you want it to be gone).
Permanent Eraser
A tool built for a single purpose, Permanent Eraser will make sure your file is completely scrambled and wiped till it’s unrecoverable by any traditional means. I’m not sure if high level data forensics can read scrambled data, I’m sure there’s always a way, but for what it’s worth, this tool will make sure your data is gone. And it’s free.
I think that’s enough of security for your files. We’ll take a look at some other areas you need to seal off in the near future. If you have any security workflow in mind, do share.
