Is ultimate OTT for a home user?

Amp34 · 7 Jan 2007 at 19:45

Energize said:
"Better protect your data
against loss or theft with Windows BitLocker™ Drive Encryption"

Doesn't really prevent loss or theft, but great if you want to store illegal material..... but since it encrypts the whole drive it will be obvious to the police there is encrypted material and you will be forced to decrypt it. Whereas truecrypt which is free will create a hidden encrypted parition using 3 ciphers so no one can tell there is encrypted data on it.

So home basic will do all those things with free programs.....

Not quite true, it encrypts the drive so nobody can take the hdd out and plug it in another PC and look at your data. You dont need to unencrypt the data or type in a password to view it on the original PC.

Its just a way of stopping theifs from taking just the HDD and viewng your data.

Tony Williams · 7 Jan 2007 at 20:10

Amp34 said:
Not quite true, it encrypts the drive so nobody can take the hdd out and plug it in another PC and look at your data. You dont need to unencrypt the data or type in a password to view it on the original PC.

Its just a way of stopping theifs from taking just the HDD and viewng your data.

That's stupid, I'd rather just steal thier PC. Also it would create more strian on the processor due to de/encryption

Amp34 · 7 Jan 2007 at 20:21

Tony Williams said:
That's stupid, I'd rather just steal thier PC. Also it would create more strian on the processor due to de/encryption

The point is it is for sensitive business information. What is the point in stealing the PC for the information if you can't get into the account to see it.

The encryption is set to your specific account (you have to backup the encryption key when you encrypt the drive as it is practically impossible to access the information without the key) which is given a specific key. Even if you reinstall windows and name an account the same as the one that encrypted the data you wont be able to see it (you have to put the original key into the new account).

I have tried it in RC2 and the CPU usage is pretty negligable after you first encrypt the drive.

EDIT: thats not for bitlocker

its for the encryption of drives other than C: But the same pretty much applies for bitlocker.

Energize · 7 Jan 2007 at 21:33

If you had sensitive business information though you wouldn't store it on an office computer you'd have it on a server with encrpytion requiring users to logon before they can even see the encrypted data and the server would be in a secure location, making microsofts idea pointless because this is how companies operate. Even using aes encryption companies wouldn't risk the chance of someone brute forcing the data.

Macro · 7 Jan 2007 at 21:44

Bitlocker is really aimed at laptop users where losing/having a laptop stolen is a real possibility. This way any sensitive data on the laptop won't be comprimised in a situation where by definition people are mobile and more likely to have that information stored localy with them. In addition the use of TPM chips on the motherboard means you can't just remove the hard drive and crack it on another machine as you require the hardware TPM key as well as account verification etc.