![]() In my review of version 9.9, I complained that this screen fails to show feedback for passwords over 21 characters in length, leading users to worry that longer passwords weren’t being accepted. Responsive in ordinary use than it did without encryption.īecause WDE encrypts every file on your disk, it has to add an authentication screen (called PGP BootGuard), which appears immediately when you turn on or restart your Mac – before Mac OS X itself has loaded. As previously, once the disk was fully encrypted, my Mac didn’t seem any less By the way, you can continue to use your Mac while encryption takes place in the background, and you can also pause and resume encryption if the need arises. I found that speed improvement quite impressive. But WDE 10.0 took only about 13 hours to encrypt a 500 GB disk, compared to the 10 hours version 9.9 took to encrypt a mere 250 GB. I tested version 10.0 on a slightly faster Mac than I used with version 9.9, so I expected to see only a minor speed improvement. ![]() After you install WDE and restart, turning on encryption is a matter of a few clicks – open the application, select your volume, enter and confirm a passphrase, and then let it run. That means I can carry my duplicate with me or store it offsite without having to worry that someone will steal or find my backup and be able to read all my files – but I can still boot from the drive if I need to. And second, I can use it to make a fully encrypted bootable duplicate. First, convenience: whole-disk encryption is more flexible and reliable than using FileVault, while being less cumbersome than using encrypted disk images. WDE Basics - In my initial review I went into some detail about why encrypting an entire startup volume is interesting, but for me, two main reasons stick out. Although the rest of PGP Desktop Pro for Mac hasn’t changed dramatically since version 9.9 (see the complete release notes, in PDF form, on PGP’s Web site), I do comment on some of its features a bit later. Now that I’ve spent some time with the latest version (10.0.2 as I write this), I want to share some observations and advice that may be useful to anyone else flirting with the idea of encrypting their primary hard disk.įirst, a small clarification: PGP’s Whole Disk Encryption is available both as a stand-alone product ($149) and as part of PGP Desktop Professional ($239), which also offers encryption for email, instant messaging, and disk images, among other features. Although Snow Leopard compatibility was the big news in version 10.0, quite a few other changes occurred too. Happily, those dark days are behind me, and I’m now once again using WDE. Since my work for TidBITS and Take Control obligated me to be an early adopter of Snow Leopard, I was among those who had to forgo an encrypted boot drive for a while. The company was appropriately apologetic for this misstep, although an updated version didn’t appear until January 2010 – meaning that for more than four months, PGP customers had to choose between upgrading to Snow Leopard and keeping their disks encrypted. Unfortunately, WDE was incompatible with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard when it first appeared in August 2009, and the fact that PGP hadn’t warned its customers about this issue prior to Snow Leopard’s release caused a certain amount of consternation. (Individuals can now buy WinMagic SecureDoc online, a welcome change Check Point Full Disk Encryption is still targeted only at large organizations.) So, for about a year, WDE was the most logical choice for individual Mac users wanting to encrypt a startup disk. However, both of these other products were at that time marketed solely to the enterprise market, whereas WDE was also readily available to ordinary end users. When WDE appeared on the scene, it already faced competition from Check Point Full Disk Encryption, and soon thereafter was joined by a Mac version of WinMagic SecureDoc. At the time, this security software was notable for being among the first products that could encrypt an entire startup volume on an Intel-based Mac. #1655: 33 years of TidBITS, Twitter train wreck, tvOS 16.4.1, Apple Card Savings, Steve Jobs ebookĪbout a year and a half ago, I reviewed the initial release of PGP Whole Disk Encryption (WDE) for Mac (see “ Securing Your Disk with PGP Whole Disk Encryption,” 31 October 2008). ![]() #1656: Passcode thieves lock iCloud accounts, the apps Adam uses, iPhoto and Aperture library conversion in Ventura.#1657: A deep dive into the innovative Arc Web browser.#1658: Rapid Security Responses, NYPD and industry standard AirTag news, Apple's Q2 2023 financials.#1659: Exposure notifications shut down, cookbook subscription service, alarm notification type proposal, Explain XKCD.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |