File Encryption

[lugesm]

Searching for a small encryption utility for the Mac that will allow the encryption/decryption of one file at a time.

FileVault wants to take over the entire Home folder, according to the description in my Mac book; and that is way to much.

I had such an encryption utility in Windows, and I would think that someone has probably done the same for Mac.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

[mkrishnan]

What people usually do (not for one file but for small handfuls) is to create an encrypted sparse disk image using Disk Utility. Then you just mount it and password in whenever you want to use it, save files to that "disk," and then eject it.

If that's not acceptable, you might try something like Cryptix.

There are also quite a few threads here on password locking individual files (which is also not really what is done in OS X or generally any Unix system); some, albeit not all, of those suggestions may also be beneficial...

 

[sanzu3]

What people usually do (not for one file but for small handfuls) is to create an encrypted sparse disk image using Disk Utility. Then you just mount it and password in whenever you want to use it, save files to that "disk," and then eject it.

If that's not acceptable, you might try something like Cryptix.

There are also quite a few threads here on password locking individual files (which is also not really what is done in OS X or generally any Unix system); some, albeit not all, of those suggestions may also be beneficial...

cool - i was just wondering how to secure a group of files - works a treat!

 

[mkrishnan]

cool - i was just wondering how to secure a group of files - works a treat!

Glad it helps!

What's more of a concern is that (cough, because the Windows architecture was drafted by idiots, cough) more and more security specs are calling for full drive encryption, which isn't available on OS X. It's ludicrous, of course, since your computer should not have any real availability to store privileged information outside the user folder (except perhaps in the VM file and the Spotlight index, which can be handled as special cases)... but on Windows this is a very different story. And that's the position I've heard more and more.