Full Disk Encryption

We require that you enable full-disk encryption (hereafter ‘FDE’) on any mobile device which contains personal data (or indeed any other data which may be sensitive or confidential). We also recommend that you do so while including an institutional recovery key, which will allow School IT staff to help decrypt your laptop if you for whatever reason forget your login password.

Here, ‘mobile device’ refers to laptops, obviously, but also smartphones, tablets, USB sticks, and portable backup devices.

This requirement is consistent with the University's policy on laptop data.

FDE means that the entire disk of your laptop is encrypted. If you lose your laptop, a thief or finder cannot see the contents of the disk, even if they physically extract it from the machine. They cannot even boot the machine. To boot, you need your login password, or the ‘recovery key’ generated during the process..

There are platform-specific instructions for

• macOS (FileVault)
• Windows (Bitlocker)
• Linux (to come, but IT Services has some brief advice)

P&A IT documentation — directory – Last modified by Norman Gray on 2020 February 13