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Encrypting your Computer's Hard Drive
Encrypting your Computer's Hard Drive

How to ensure your hard disk is encrypted

Ashley Hyman avatar
Written by Ashley Hyman
Updated over a week ago

NOTE: Your company may have alternate specific guidance for how you should encrypt your hard drive - please check with your IT and compliance teams.

HERE'S HOW

On MacOS:

  1. Open System Preferences, then click on Security & Privacy

  2. Click on the FileVault tab

  3. If FileVault is not turned on, click the "Turn On FileVault…" button

You may need to click the lock in the lower left corner to make changes

You should see the following if FileVault is enabled:

On Windows Professional 10 and Windows Professional 11:

You may want to follow the steps to Turn on standard Bitlocker encryption provided by Microsoft.

  1. Locate the hard drive you want to encrypt under “This PC” in Windows Explorer.

  2. Right-click the target drive and choose “Turn on BitLocker.”

  3. Choose “Enter a Password.”

  4. Enter a secure password.

  5. Choose “How to Enable Your Recovery Key” which you’ll use to access your drive if you lose your password.

  6. Choose “Encrypt Entire Drive.” This option is more secure and encrypts files you marked for deletion.

  7. Click “Start Encrypting” to begin the encryption process.

NOTE 1: BitLocker is not available for Windows Home Edition.

On Ubuntu Linux:

Resources with detailed instructions for encrypting your hard drive for those utilizing Ubuntu:
​https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Full_Disk_Encryption_Howto_2019
​https://medium.com/@chrishantha/encrypting-disks-on-ubuntu-19-04-b50bfc65182a

NOTE: You will need to manually upload evidence of disk encryption on Linux when using the Drata agent. See this article for more details.
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