Everything about FileVault
Do you want people not to be able to get rid of the data on your Mac? Then you can protect the Mac with encryption, so that people cannot simply access your Mac’s data as long as they do not know the password. This is possible as standard with FileVault on every Mac. In this tip we explain what FileVault does and how to set up this security.
FileVault, what is it?
The Mac has included the option to encrypt all data for years. The data on your Mac is made unreadable according to a special algorithm and uses a password as a key. This is also called encryption and is controlled on the Mac via the FileVault option.
FileVault must be enabled separately on the Mac, because it is not enabled by default. By encrypting your data with FileVault, you make your Mac’s overall security much stronger, because criminals can’t access anything without a password. Even if they copied your drive, without the password they would only have unreadable data.
The disadvantage is that this also applies to you… If you forget your password, you will no longer have access to your data.
Enable FileVault on your Mac
Follow these steps to activate FileVault:
- Go to > System Settings and then open the Security and Privacy options.
- Scroll down and click FileVault.
- Click Enable to protect your Mac’s drive with encryption.
- If your Mac has multiple users, you must enter the password for each user to apply FileVault encryption. Then press Continue.
- You can set some more details with the Advanced button.
A recovery key is automatically created during configuration. Make sure you remember this well. You will lose access to your data if you forget both your password and your recovery key.
Once you’re done, you can use the computer as normal. macOS encrypts your data in the background. You have no further work on this position and you will not notice anything. FileVault always works completely in the background. The only thing that has changed is that your Mac is more secure.
Disable FileVault
If you disable FileVault, the data will be on your hard drive or SSD without encryption. You can disable it as follows:
- Choose > System Settings > Security & Privacy.
- Go to FileVault.
- Enter the administrator name and password.
- Click Disable FileVault.
All contents of the drive must now be decrypted again. This happens in the background when you use your Mac and when the Mac is not in sleep mode. You can check progress on the tab mentioned earlier.
Enhanced FileVault 2
The latest version FileVault 2 has been around since 2011 and is present in Mac OS X Lion and newer. This is a much improved version that encrypts the entire boot drive. Disk images are no longer used. FileVault 2 uses XTS-AES-128 encryption with a 256-bit code, making it more secure. The performance is also a lot better than FileVault 1.0. If you have friends who discourage you from using FileVault due to performance impacts, ask if they are talking about the very first version from years ago or more recent OS X or macOS versions.
Should I use FileVault?
You are of course not obliged to use FileVault, but it does make your Mac a lot more secure. The tool protects your files from a brute force attack.
The main ‘disadvantage’ is that you have to unlock your Mac every time it starts up or comes out of sleep. Another point of attention is that the process requires some of your processing power, but this is minimal. If you do not have valuable data on your Mac and you always store it in a safe place, you can skip FileVault.
Does FileVault slow down your Mac?
Benchmark tests show that FileVault does not noticeably slow down your Mac, even if the data has to be decrypted every time. Fortunately, the disadvantages do not outweigh the advantages. It is a good practice to enable FileVault, especially if you store a lot of privacy-sensitive information on your Mac, such as financial information, scanned passports, private photos and the like.
A decline in performance is noticeable with SSDs from third parties that work with Data Compression. You may experience some delays on these SSDs because they cannot compress encrypted data. For Apple’s own SSDs, File Vault uses Hardware Acceleration, so there should be no noticeable performance difference.
More security features on Mac can be found here:
- Secure Enclave: this is how Apple’s special security chip works in the iPhone, iPad and Mac
- T1 and T2 Security Chip: this is how the security chips in the Mac work
- This is how you protect a PDF file on the Mac
- This is how you protect macOS folders with a password
