Encryption

[ScottStevinson]

In the light of the government's mistakes with loss of personal data in recent months, I'm currently looking at just how secure our data protection practices are. One thing I'd like to improve is the security of staff laptops which are removed from site. The majority are XP, but a couple are Vista (myself as NM and a couple of early adopting staff who specifically requested it when they had new machines).

 

Basically their documents are synchronised between the laptop and one of our servers when the laptop is connected to our network, meaning that an up to date copy of documents is always stored on the hard disk of the laptop. So basically what I need is an inexpensive way of encrypting the local documents folder so that it's useless if the laptop is stolen, but still synchronises OK with onsite servers.

 

Any ideas?

 

Scott

[sahmeepee]

You could tick the box in the offline files settings that says "encrypt offline files to secure data". Don't do it via group policy in XP though, because although the setting looks like it's worked there is a bug which means the data is actually still unencrypted on the disk.

[Ric_]

This has been discussed in some depth recently in light of the new directives to be introduced. I believe that Becta is still considering its recommendation but a number of us have decided to go down the TrueCrypt route. Check out http://www.edugeek.net/forums/security/21084-truecrypt-drive-encryption-whos-using-production-laptops.html for implementation ideas.

[ScottStevinson]

Thanks again Ric!

 

At first glance that TrueCrypt thread confused me a litle, but after taking brain out of neutral and re-reading it it all makes sense now!

 

Just testing it on my laptop as I speak. 57 minutes remain

 

Will let you know how it goes.

 

Scott

[Sirbendy]

I use truecrypt...but in file container mode. I haven't tried the new one yet with "entire disk" encryption, but I would imagine it'd be quite passable.