Shedding Light on Data Encryption in Mac to Prevent Unauthorized Access

Is your data secured against unauthorized user access being on a network? Well, you cannot be so sure about the security of your personal as well as professional data while being connected to a network. Imagine the situation if somebody steels your hard drive, expecting him to wipe it would be foolishness. To avoid such situations, you can go for data encryption, which protects the data from unauthorized access even if it is stolen.

Those who are not aware of encryption might be thinking of whether data encryption is safe on their Mac machine or not; however, the question remains until the technique is not put to practice. Data encryption refers to a process of encoding or converting the data to a non-readable form using advanced encryption algorithms in order to prohibit unauthorized user access.

Mac OS X facilitates AES-128 Encryption using Disk Utility to protect the data against intruders. The encryption process includes creating a password-protected image (with .dmg extension) of the complete Mac volume including data. Below mentioned is the process of creating an encrypted disk image using Disk Utility:

• Go to Disk Utility
  (Follow Go (on the task bar) -> Applications-> Utility folder-> Disk Utility).

• Select the target disk in the left-pane of the opened window and click ‘New Image’ above in the menu bar.

• Type a name for the image file and select a location to save it.

• Select the image ‘Format’ and ‘Encryption’ type below.
  (Select AES-128 Encryption from the drop-down list.)

• Click ‘Save’ to start imaging.

A small window will prompt you to type an encryption password for the disk image.

You can choose a strong password for the disk image in this set password window. As you can see that there is a small key button next to the password field that opens a “Password Assistance” window. Here, the password characters you type are automatically measured in terms of ‘Quality’ and ‘Length’. Though you can choose the ‘Type’ of password you want to apply, choosing ‘Memorable’ allows you to set your own password that is easy to remember.

(Selecting type gives password suggestions letting you know the type of characters required under this category.)

Tip: Make sure the checkbox ‘Remember Password’ given below is not checked (checked by default).

You can find the image file at the specified location after the process completes. Every time you double click this image, an 'Enter Password' dialog box appears. Enter correct password to mount the image; however, the image is relocked as soon as you unmount it.

If you need to encrypt files or folders individually, you can opt for a Mac data encryptor. Since remembering the password of every encrypted file or folder is unpalatable, it is better to encrypt a folder and put all essential data into that.