Dear Colleagues, My institution is introducing concerted measures for improved security via encryption of files. A laudable plan in case of loss or theft of a computer with official files eg exams or student records type of information stored on it.
Files, folders or a whole disk drive can be encrypted. Whilst I can target specific files, this could get messy and time consuming to target them and keep track of new to-be-encrypted files. It is tempting therefore to agree to complete encryption. However, as my laptop is my calculations' workbench, as well as office tasks, I am concerned that unexpected runtime errors may occur from encryption and there may be difficulties of transferability of data files to colleagues and students, and to eg PDB. Does anyone have experience of encryption? Are my anxieties misplaced? If not, will I need to plan to separate office files, which could then all be encrypted, from crystallographic data files/calculations, which could be left unencrypted. If separate treatment is the best plan does one need two computers once more, rather than the one laptop? A different solution would be to try to insist on an institutional repository keeping such files. In anticipation, Thankyou, John Prof John R Helliwell DSc
