Overview
The data on people’s computers needs to be protected in most cases. Documents like tax returns, bank statements, contact lists, personal photos, and passwords are examples of data that is commonly stored on a personal computer that people want to keep private. If your laptop gets lost or stolen, there is software that can be used to access the data, even without the password to your operating system. The way to protect data on a laptop is to use encryption. The purpose of this lab is for students to download and install free disk encryption software and then encrypt their operating system and data drives.
outcomes
In this lab, you will learn to:
- Apply drive encryption to a hard drive
- Install software to encrypt the hard drive
- Encrypt the Windows partition
- Encrypt the data drive
Courses
Key terms and descriptions
Encryption
The process of making data unreadable through a process of encoding. Data that is encrypted and cannot be read without the decryption keys is known as ciphertext.
Ciphertext
When plaintext data is encrypted by using mathematical algorithms, it becomes known as ciphertext. Ciphertext is encoded, encrypted data.
Plaintext
Data that is not encoded or encrypted; data that anyone can read without a decryption key.
Decryption
The process of using keys or ciphers to decode ciphertext. When the data is decoded or decrypted with the decryption keys, it is known as plaintext.
VeraCrypt
A free and open source tool for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS that encrypts volumes and disks. The tool can be downloaded free by using this link: https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Downloads.html