Using EFS

Students will use EFS to protect files and folders on the system. Students will grant other user’s on their Windows system access to the EFS files. Users who are not granted access to the EFS files and folders will receive an error message when they try to access and read the files.

Overview

Data integrity is one of the three pillars of the CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity, and availability).  The encrypted file system first came into use on NTFS volumes starting with Windows 2000 and since then has been a very good way to keep files and folders secure on Windows server and client systems. If the user’s password is changed, the user might need to use a recovery key to recover the file. In this lab, you will see how it is possible to provide access to other users to the files or folders that were encrypted using EFS.

Outcomes

In this lab, you will learn to:

  1. Encrypt a folder
  2.  Backup a user’s key 
  3. Give access to files to Windows users 
  4. Access encrypted files 
Courses

Key terms and descriptions

EFS
The Encrypted File System is a Microsoft Technology that allows a user to encrypt a file.
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.