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Kernel key management

Posted Nov 22, 2006 13:44 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
Parent article: Kernel key management

I was wondering - what's better (faster, safer, etc.) for local disks (e.g. for disks in laptops that could be easily stolen): encrypt a filesystem or encrypt the block device under the filesystem?

Bye,NAR

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Posted Nov 22, 2006 19:21 UTC (Wed) by arjan (subscriber, #36785) [Link]

technically it's "Safer" to encrypt the device as a whole, there can't then be leaked blocks from files that moved all over the disk..

HOwever encrypting files is more convenient for several things: for example if you need to legally remove all data from a certain person... all you need to do is destroy his key now, and that takes care automatically of all your backup tapes too ;)