An Introduction to File Encryption in Mac OS X
Last year, in between writing Take Control books and Macworld articles, I managed to squeeze in another little project - writing the 900-page "Mac Security Bible," published in January 2010 by Wiley. Although Rich Mogull is the real staff expert when it comes to Mac security, I've also written a good deal on the subject, including Take Control titles dealing with backups, spam, and passwords. This new book is a compendium of everything a typical (or even advanced) Mac user might want to know on a wide range of security topics.
This article is an excerpt from Chapter 13, "Encrypting and Securely Deleting Files," reprinted with the kind permission of Wiley. File encryption is of course just one tiny piece of the security puzzle, but it's worth knowing about if you keep confidential data on your Mac, especially if the computer is ever out of your physical control - which would include being lost or stolen.
Think about it this way: Would it bother you or any of your friends or family if the entire contents of your Address Book were made public? Would you be disturbed to know that a stranger could see years' worth of your family photos, read all your email, and discover every Web site you've visited in the past month? Even the least secretive of us would probably agree that all this sounds pretty creepy, and that we have good reasons to keep private information private.
