Securing your MacBook Air

[Gregintosh]

I was wondering if there was any way to secure a MacBook Air's data in case it is stolen or somehow render the computer useless.

I already put a password on it and require it at logon and such, but someone can still potentially use a superdrive, pop in the restore disc, and remove the password, can't they?

Is there any way to put a password on booting kind of like how on PCs you can set a password so that no one can boot from any device other than the HD? Or maybe something like a BIOS password?

I don't want to have to use FileVault as that will slow down the computer even more and probably eat away battery and CPU cycles on encrypting and decrypting.

 

[glitch44]

I was wondering if there was any way to secure a MacBook Air's data in case it is stolen or somehow render the computer useless.

I already put a password on it and require it at logon and such, but someone can still potentially use a superdrive, pop in the restore disc, and remove the password, can't they?

Is there any way to put a password on booting kind of like how on PCs you can set a password so that no one can boot from any device other than the HD? Or maybe something like a BIOS password?

I don't want to have to use FileVault as that will slow down the computer even more and probably eat away battery and CPU cycles on encrypting and decrypting.

This is in the MBA forum when really it's just an OS X question, but I'll try to answer anyway:

1) yes

2) Open Firmware password.

3) If you don't use FileVault someone could take the drive out, mount it in another computer, and extract the data that way. Alternately you could encrypt only crucial data in encrypted DMGs or Truecrypt containers.

Apple has a 235 page pdf on securing Leopard. It's available here.

The NSA also put a guide to securing OS X. A link to and overview of it are available here.