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[Fed-Talk] Looking for encrypted hard drives

Does anyone know of good solutions for encrypting data at rest on Macs (preferably the entire drive)? Unlike my last job, "throw the drive in a GSA Class 5 safe when you leave the room" is not an option for me at the moment.

I've experimented with FileVault, but have heard several horror stories of losing data if the machine crashes while you're logged in as a user with a FileVault-protected home directory.

I've used PGPDisk in previous jobs, which works quite well as an encrypted file repository (especially one that can be shared between Macs and Windows boxes), but doesn't protect things like the web browser cache, cookies, history, email cache, etc.

I've recently been experimenting with Cryptocard's Crypto-Logon, which is quite cool, but is only an authentication mechanism, not an INFOSEC mechanism.

I've looked at firewire hard drive enclosures that encrypt the data in flight and use a crypto ignition key--these are closest to what I want, but all of the ones I can find on the commercial market (based on enova's X-Wall chip) use insecure tokens (i.e., ones that can be easily duplicated or sniffed). However, these look the most promising as long as you can keep physical control of the token.

I've seen fingerprint-protected drives, but I haven't found any substantial security analyses of them, so I have no way to evaluate them against my threat model.

Something that protected the internal drive of a laptop would be ideal, but an external Firewire or USB drive would work. Ideally, I am looking for something that requires a CIK or Smart Card *and* a PIN/password (two factor authentication), and encrypts the entire disk contents. Cost is not a major concern.

Does anyone know of anything on the market like this? It seems as though it would be widely useful, but darned if I can find one.

Oh, and a side note to Apple people reading this: "encrypt whole drive" would be a *really* nice feature to have in Leopard. If you're looking for additional features ;-)...


Amanda Walker

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