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How to View FileVault Progress When Encrypting a Mac Disk

Feb 8, 2017 - 3 Comments
Check Filevault encryption progress

Using Filevault on a Mac encrypts the entire hard drive and helps protect personal data from theft or unauthorized snooping. It’s a great security feature that many users enable when they’re first setting up their Mac, but some users may enable it or disable it later as well. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, but … Read More

Disabling FileVault to Decrypt Mac Hard Disks

May 10, 2016 - 6 Comments
Disable FileVault Disk Encryption on a Mac and decrypt the drive

While enabling and using FileVault disk encryption is highly recommended for security-conscious Mac users with modern hardware and SSD volumes, some users may decide they do not need to use FileVault for a variety of reasons, or perhaps they just want to disable it for another purpose. That’s what we’re going to demonstrate here, disabling … Read More

How to Bypass a FileVault Password On a Per Boot Basis with Mac OS X

Mar 6, 2015 - 12 Comments
Lock a Mac Screen

Using FileVault full disk encryption is one of the better ways to protect your Mac and personal documents from prying eyes and password resets, but if you’re troubleshooting a Mac with FileVault, either your own or someone else’s, it’s kind of annoying to have another layer of passwords necessary to enter before you’ll be able … Read More

Preventing Manual Password Resets on a Mac by Using FileVault Security

Jan 3, 2014 - 5 Comments
Secured Mac

Nearly all Mac users have a login and password required to access the Mac upon boot (and if you don’t, you should!), which provides a reasonable layer of password protection to keep out most prying eyes. Users with more advanced security needs may need to go further to protect their Mac from unauthorized access though, … Read More

How to Determine if a Mac Is Using FileVault from the Command Line

Nov 25, 2013 - 3 Comments
FileVault

FileVault is a security feature that offers full disk encryption for Macs. Identifying Macs that are using FileVault is fairly easy in person for machines that have a logged in user account, all you have to do is check System Preferences to see if has been enabled or not. But what if you the Mac … Read More

Maximize FileVault Security by Destroying Key Storage in Standby Mode

Jul 6, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Maximum FileVault Security

Standby mode is a power saving feature that automatically hibernates a Mac after it has been in sleep mode for a while, which it does to further decrease drain on battery. When a Mac using FileVault encryption is placed into standby mode, a FileVault key (yes, this key is encrypted) is stored in EFI (firmware) … Read More

Use FileVault to Get Full Disk Encryption in Mac OS X

May 22, 2013 - 11 Comments
FileVault disk encryption for the Mac

FileVault is an amazing disk level encryption feature that comes with Mac OS X. When it has been enabled, it encrypts everything, all disk contents, and actively encrypts and decrypts data on the fly, meaning any newly created data or document will instantly be encrypted as well. It’s fast and incredibly secure, using XTS-AES 128 … Read More

FileVault 2 Benchmarks Show Full Disk Encryption is Faster Than Ever in OS X Lion

Aug 10, 2011 - 8 Comments
FileVault 2 Speed Test benchmarks

FileVault 2 is the all new disk encryption method that comes with Lion, and it’s more secure than ever, using XTS-AES 128 encryption on your entire disk, as opposed to just the user directory as in past versions. The other huge change that came with FileVault 2 is the significant performance boost, where using full … Read More

FileVault and QuickLook leak some information from encrypted volumes in Mac OS

Jul 25, 2010 - 15 Comments

If you use FileVault and QuickLook on a Mac you may want to know that the combination of the two may leak some sensitive information from encrypted volumes. Reader Jack R. sent in the following tip, explaining the situation further: When FileVault and QuickLook are used concurrently, information about what files are stored on the … Read More

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