
Recently, the Transportation Security Administration lost a computer hard drive containing Social Security numbers, bank data and payroll information for about 100,000 employee records. Authorities realized Thursday the hard drive was missing from a controlled area at TSA headquarters. Being lost/stolen from a secure area goes to show you that you can never be too careful with your sensitive data.
How could this have been prevented? No matter how careful you are and what kind of security measures you take, a determined thief can find a way to get what they want. If the TSA hard drive had been encrypted, the theft would not have had even a fraction of the impact that it has. The use of
Truecrypt would've been the perfect solution!
TrueCrypt is an Open Source software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved, without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. Entire file system is encrypted (e.g.., file names, folder names, contents of every file, free space, meta data, etc).
Despite its sophistication, Truecrypt is incredibly easy to use. Since most people use CD-R's to back up data, we'll show you how to create an encrypted volume that will fit on a CD.
You'll need to download and install:
Truecrypt