Should I Encrypt My Mac?
If you’re concerned about the security and privacy of your files you definitely should consider encrypting your Mac. However, there are a couple of things to consider before you begin the process. Please take these potential risks and drawbacks into consideration before you attempt any encryption. First, while encryption won’t slow down your Mac’s performance, it will slow its read/write speed as it will need to encrypt and decrypt data on the fly. This could result in files taking longer to open or save than you might be used to. Second, if something goes wrong you could lose access to your data or even lose your data entirely, so you might want to back up your Mac before you start. That way if something does go wrong you’ll just have to restore your backups. If you encrypt your Mac, forget your password, and misplace your recovery key, you could get locked out of your system. Additionally, if your Mac uses the T2 chip and part of the chip is damaged, your encrypted files could be lost.
What Does Encrypting Your Mac Mean?
Encryption is a common method used to make your digital files more difficult for outside parties such as hackers or government agencies to decipher and read. It uses an algorithm to scramble data, which can then be unscrambled by the intended recipients using a unique key. Encrypting your Mac is similar to network encryption and End-to-End encryption, only the intention is to keep your local files confidential rather than to protect them during an upload or download. If anyone were to access your computer against your wishes or without your knowledge, they would need to decrypt the data first in order to be able to read it.
Encrypting Your Mac Using FileVault
In order to encrypt your entire Mac system, you’ll need to turn on FileVault.
Encrypting External Drives With Your Mac
To encrypt an external drive, you’ll first need to make sure the drive’s been formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using Disk Utility. Once the drive has been formatted you will be able to encrypt/decrypt it. You will need to input your system password to complete the process. As with enabling FileVault, you may need to click the Lock icon in the bottom-left corner of the window and input your system password in order to make any changes.
Can You Encrypt a File on Mac?
Encrypting separate files on your Mac is a little more involved, and uses the Disk Utility app rather than FileVault. You’ll need to create an encrypted disk image (DMG) file and store the files you want to encrypt inside of it.
Is Mac Encrypted By Default?
Whether or not your Mac is encrypted out of the box depends on the model. Several Macs released in 2018 and later come with Apple’s T2 security chip installed, which does provide automatic drive encryption. Older models that do not have the T2 chip will not have encryption enabled by default. You can find a comprehensive list of Mac models that use the T2 chip on Apple’s website. To check if your Mac has the T2 chip installed, click the icon in the top-left corner of the screen while holding down the Option key. This will enable the System Information option at the top of the menu. Click System Information, then under Hardware in the left-hand column select either Controller or iBridge (this will depend on your version of macOS). The window to the right of the Hardware column will show “Model Name: Apple T2 chip” if you do have the chip installed.
