Securing Your Stand Alone Or Network Node Machine

Protection against eavesdropping with encryption

Encrypting data is a useful adjunct to most security systems - put simply, even if you can't stop other people getting your data, you can at least stop them making sense of it. As previously mentioned, encryption techniques can be added to backup's and emails relatively simply. Backup encryption has been covered above so I will simply go through encrypting an email sent to another party. In this example I am assuming you have already installed the digital ID in Outlook Express. Of course, to exchange encrypted email with another party you will have to exchange the key values but you automatically send your digital ID to another party when you send a digitally signed message. To send an encrypted email to someone just click the send message button and type your message as usual. Click the 'Sign' and 'Encrypt' buttons in Outlook Express and click the 'Send' button. If you don't have the other persons digital ID you will be presented with an error box like this:-

As you can see it's telling you you don't have the other person's digital ID and so can't encrypt your email to them. If you could they wouldn't be able to read it anyway so there's little point. If you have got their digital ID the message will be sent immediately.

When you receive a digitally signed and encrypted message from someone the first time you will be informed of the fact in Outlook Express message window and told to press a continue button to read about any problems with the digital ID/Encryption involved. After that first message from them you are informed of the fact that the message is signed and encrypted by the rosette and lock symbols in the mail reader as below:-

It is also possible to encrypt files with products like PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), available from www.pgp.com . To be honest, though, if you are password protecting your backups and your emails you are probably pretty secure. If a thief steals your computer they have your data anyway. Versions of Unix and Linux, etc, have encrypted filesystem capabilities but that's another story.

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© Copyright Andrew Bennett 2006