Computer Security & Backup

[John W Kercheval]

As a follow-on from my backup post here is what were are doing:

Our company is big on data security. FYI, we use Apricorn hard drives that require physical codes to be punched into the external drive AND the drives themselves are encrypted to AES 256 bit levels.


http://www.amazon.com/Apricorn-ADT-3PL25...ricorn+4TB

Ditto for the USB Flash drives:

http://www.amazon.com/Apricorn-Validated...ricorn+USB

The Macs ' hdds are encrypted with File Vault 2.

The IBMs are $8,000 Itronix GD8200s. their drives are encrypted by PGP. Which is not part of Symantec.

As for backup:

The Macs back up fine with the on-board Time Machine. Back up the encrypted HDDs with File Vault to the Encrypted Apricorns and they can be restored 100% of the time with no issues.


The Itronix' are NOW being backed up to the external Apricorns with Casper Software which is specifically designed to back up encrypted drives to other encrypted drives. WE ARE STILL TESTING THIS THOUGH.

Here is Casper:

http://www.fssdev.com/products/caspersecure/

I will post follow-ups on this.

Finally, we took the advice of people on this board with respect to Acronis. It will NOT back up the encrypted Itronix to the Apricorns even though you think it can when you do it. It gives you no errors but restoration is not possible. This is highly deceptive.

It DOES back up the Macs fine but we don't need that as we have time machine.


But the interface is fantastic and for specific file backups and backup management it does seem to be superb. We are still experimenting with it. If the drives were not encrypted that would be a fabulous pgm.

More to follow very soon.

Thank you,

Professor John Kercheval
CEO & Founder, The Vulture Capital Fund/ The Icarus Fund
http://www.vulture-capital.net