Securing Macbook Pro r

[awegew]

I'm picking up a MBPr. It's going to have boot camp and will dual boot both operating systems. My question is about encryption and securing the hard drive. Will I need bitlocker (Microsoft's encryption program) or does OSX give me a way to secure the device.

When looking for these on Craigslist, I also read of a way you can protect people from reloading the OS unless they have a password. Otherwise, you actually need an Apple Genius to reset the thing. Does anyone know about that?

I'll have files on each that I want to be secure. Thanks!

 

[chrise2]

OS X has full disk encryption. However, I doubt that applies to a boot camp partition. Also, Microsoft Bitlocker requires Windows Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate and I don't think you could use it on a Mac with Bootcamp as it would probably mess with the partitions too much.

Your best bet is to use Full Disk Encryption in OS X (its called FileVault 2) and to use VMware Fusion or Parallels to run Windows. The VM data would be encrypted on the OS X disk so you'd be ok.

 

[Weaselboy]

When looking for these on Craigslist, I also read of a way you can protect people from reloading the OS unless they have a password. Otherwise, you actually need an Apple Genius to reset the thing. Does anyone know about that?

I'll have files on each that I want to be secure. Thanks!

What that refers to is the EFI (firmware) password option. You can read more about it here. It prevents anybody from booting the machine from another drive like an external.

Like chrise2 said, FV2 on OS X is a good thing.

Before you dive in with either of these though, you should check out how they both impact Bootcamp usage. I believe I have read there are problems there.

 

[awegew]

"Your best bet is to use Full Disk Encryption in OS X (its called FileVault 2) and to use VMware Fusion or Parallels to run Windows. The VM data would be encrypted on the OS X disk so you'd be ok."

A VM is really not going to do it. I have some things that I need to run that will work better with native access to the video card.

I'll look into the information about FileVault 2.

One thing that I guess would work is if I had some way to encrypt just one folder in Windows.

Microsoft Bitlocker requires Windows Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate

It also requires a Trusted Computing Module which a Mac doesn't have.

 

[chrise2]

It doesn't require a TPM chip (though its highly recommended). In Windows 8 you don't need a TPM chip at all. In Windows 7, you would need to boot with a USB stick with the encryption key. I did that. Total pain. You can encrypt direcxtories within Windows. That's probably your best bet if you want to encrypt files in Windows with bootcamp.