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[Nurse Marcia]

Thanks WM! I'm also on a MacBook so I will do that.

[craigandjen]

This is a great thread! Thanks, WM.

Sounds like there are some very experienced people giving advice, so I have a question for you.

If your computer is protected with a 9 character strong password to access it, does that provide enough security to prevent a thief from even getting to your data if the computer is stolen?

To be honest most operating system passwords (your log in screen) are not all that secure. Even a half assed hacker with the right software on a USB key can bypass that. That being said Mac operating system is a bit better than windows. It was built on a UNIX type architecture (BSD). Your best bet... hard drive encryption with at least.... I stress at least... 128 bit encryption. There is a caveat to that... you need a good fast processor in order not to bog down your system and lots of memory. For example... I have an i7 third gen, 32 gigs of ram and a solid state drive. Another option is a finger print reader (get a good one). It hooks to your USB and you need your finger print to unlock. Another but more difficult option is an authentication USB key. Basically you cant boot the PC unless the USB authentication key is in your USB port. Kinda like a chip car key. But as someone said... a good hacker is going to get through most things. But a good hacker is hard to find (again the media would have you think you are always in danger). A hacker generally doesnt hack unless they have a reason too. Hacking is not a simple task.

[Rob]

More great advice. I have had to "recover" machines when the owner forgot their password. Booting off a USB drive has come in handy on many occasions, even on a Mac or two. Even without the password, without encryption your data can be read rather easily booting this way.

But as mentioned, this encryption can slow an average machine down to the point of being unusable. A simple way to store your most confidential information is not to save it on the computer at all. I have several USB drives that I keep confidential data only stored on and only access it on the USB drive.

For the average user, none of this is necessary. Hackers look for something that will make them money, such as credit card numbers, banking info and the such. They really wont care about your documents or pictures or 99% of the stuff on your computer.

That is why major store chains get hacked, they have millions of credit cards stored and that info is worth the effort. If stolen, your single PC would most likely be blanked and reformatted with a new operating system.

[Weathermon & Mi Lady]

Thanks to all for the information, most helpful.

[BrianJM]

This is a great thread! Thanks, WM.

Sounds like there are some very experienced people giving advice, so I have a question for you.

If your computer is protected with a 9 character strong password to access it, does that provide enough security to prevent a thief from even getting to your data if the computer is stolen?

Absolutely not. Full disk encryption is the only means to protect all of the data on your hard drive.

Otherwise, all that is required is to boot to a Ubuntu LiveCD and copy the data to a USD drive. Alternatively, the drive can be removed and placed in another computer or external enclosure and copied that way.

You can also create encrypted containers to files without encrypting the entire drive. But, I still recommend FDE. (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201599)

[BrianJM]

But as mentioned, this encryption can slow an average machine down to the point of being unusable.

I disagree with this statement.

I've been using FDE on every laptop I have owned since 2007 - Windows, OS X and Ubuntu. The laptop I am working off of right now is a 2011 MBP with a solid state drive, and it is still fast enough to run VMs, Photoshop, Lightroom, video editing, and anything else that is considered CPU, hard drive and graphically intensive. Even though it is 4 years old with FDE, I have no reason to replace it.

In many configuration, the performance impact is negligible.
http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/10/filev...mac-os-x-lion/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4485/b...lion-review/18
http://apple.stackexchange.com/quest...cess-on-an-ssd

Especially in the past 3-4 years, FDE performance has improved substantially.