Tips & Tricks: The importance of data encryption

Data encryption has become an increasingly important practice, especially when you deal with an abundance of sensitive information.

Encryption is a mechanism that protects your valuable and sensitive information on your device. With any encryption tools, you need to provide an encryption password (or key), which will be used by the tool to scramble the data so that no one can read it. The only way to "unscramble" the data is to use the same tool and provide the same key you used when you encrypted it. In some cases you can choose a password that is meaningful to you. You must safely guard the encryption key; without this exact key, you will not be able to read your encrypted files.

Both Windows and Mac platforms have software available that will encrypt your data.

Please contact our helpdesk at Schulich Information Services for further help.