OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Using Encryption

Your Mac may contain files that you want to do more than password-protect due to their confidential or sensitive information. You've heard the stories about people losing thousands of financial records that were stored on a laptop that was lost. Had those laptops used encryption for those sensitive files, the risk of the loss would have been minuscule.

OS X comes with an encryption utility called FileVault. You turn it on in the FileVault pane of the Security & Privacy system preference:

1. Click Turn On FileVault.

2. A settings sheet appears that requires each user with an account on the Mac to enter their password if they want to unlock the encrypted disk. Click Enable User to the right of each user that displays this button to enter their passwords. Then click Continue.

3. Another settings sheet appears that explains that OS X creates a recovery key so you can access your Mac's encrypted startup disk should you ever forget your password. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of Show Recovery Key to see the automatically generated recovery key for your disk. Be sure to write it down and save it in a safe place. Then click Continue.

4. In the settings sheet that appears, you can select the Store the Recover Key with Apple option as an extra safety net to have Apple store your recovery key, which you can get from its website if you correctly answer the three questions you set up when enabling FileVault in this settings sheet. (Note that Apple won't guarantee ...