According to Apple, “Encryption occurs in the background as you use your Mac, and only while your Mac is awake and plugged in to AC power.” Note: It may take some time to fully encrypt your Mac. Your hard drive will be encrypted, and anyone who starts up your Mac will need your password to continue. Click the padlock, then enter an administrator name and password.Open the Apple menu > System Preferences > Security & Privacy.It’s available for free in OS X Lion and later. In other words, FileVault scrambles your hard disk so that only you (with the password) can access any data on it. According to Apple, “ FileVault full-disk encryption (FileVault 2) uses XTS-AES-128 encryption with a 256-bit key to help prevent unauthorized access to the information on your startup disk.” Use your Mac’s built-in FileVault to securely encrypt your entire hard drive. We’ll cover password protecting individual files and folders on your Mac. There are simpler options for password protecting certain files and folders. You can protect all the files on your Mac by encrypting your entire hard drive with FileVault.īut maybe you don’t need to protect all your files, or you just think FileVault is a bit overkill for your purposes. Taking steps to protect yourself will minimise the risks. There are three places threats to your data are likely to come from: over the internet, via an email, or from someone with direct access to your Mac. This articles explains how you can password protect files and folders on your Mac.

Yet many of us give it scant attention and do little more than the bare minimum, if anything at all to ensure that hackers, opportunists and, yes, even the authorities, are able to access as little of our personal data as possible. Keeping those data secure and maintaining privacy are highly important for any Mac user. In today’s contemporary society, we store a wealth of data on our computers, some of it private and very sensitive.

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