Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

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CHAPTER 8 LEOPARD SECURITY
• Since FileVault encrypts your entire home directory, it tends to encrypt lots of things that just don’t
need to be encrypted (e.g., the iTunes library). This presents a large performance penalty.
• If you use FileVault, you should also keep in mind that any backups should be encrypted as well. It
doesn’t do any good protecting your information on your computer if your backups aren’t equally
protected.
• If you occasionally need this sort of protection, it may be a good idea to create a separate account
specifically for this purpose.
• If you need to protect only a limited amount of data, it may be a better idea to just utilize an
encrypted disk image that contains the protected data, as this provides quite a bit more flexibility.
If you should change your mind, you can turn off FileVault by repeating the same steps used
in turning it on.
Other Security Features
In very general terms, computer security is divided into physical security and network security.
Physical security represents the security of your computer when someone is sitting right in front
of it, while with network security, you are protecting your computer from a potential threat that
could be halfway around the world. The trouble with these simple distinctions is that today they
tend to blur a bit, especially with multiuser systems like OS X, where there is blurring between
physical and network security with remote desktop technologies that allow many users to essentially
have physical access to the system, even over a network.
The obvious place to begin looking for all of these is the Security preference pane in System
Preferences. Here we have three tabs: General (Figure 8-10), FileVault, and Firewall.
Figure 8-10. The general security options in the Security preference pane