On the other hand, there are some data protection regulations like the GDPR or HIPAA which are mandatory to follow if you are a business or a company user. Therefore, you should encrypt them, especially when they contain sensitive or personally identifiable information. If they are not encrypted, in such situations, there is a high risk of exposing your sensitive information to unauthorized people. While external hard drives and USB sticks are extremely useful when transferring or viewing data from one machine to another, there’s a possibility of losing them. Why should you encrypt your external hard drive or USB? It is a symmetric block cipher, which means that the same key is used for disk encryption and decryption. The objective of AES is to provide a specification for electronic data encryption. It was established by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is one of the widely used global standards for encryption. The basic purpose of encrypting external hard drives is to protect its data from unauthorized persons. It provides a layer of security to your external hard drive against hackers and other online threats. This can be done by using software or some other ways.Īfter disk encryption, the data on the external hard drive cannot be accessed by anyone who doesn’t own the relevant key or password. How does Encrypting an External Hard Drive or USB WorkĮncrypting an external hard drive means making it secure by encrypting the data stored on it using sophisticated mathematical functions. Related guide: How to encrypt your internet traffic In this guide I will show you how to encrypt an external hard drive or USB flash drive. When encrypted, it’s very difficult for hackers to access the data these devices contain if they get stolen or misplaced. These kinds of data breaches can be avoided if you encrypt your external hard disks or USB drives. In many cases, it will result in a data breach. However, what will happen if you lose or misplace any of these devices? Thanks to their high capacity, small size, and portability, they are great options for transferring or viewing data from one PC to another. Nowadays, they are becoming more valuable as modern schooling, work, and life is overflowing with data. Advantages and disadvantages of encrypting your external drivesĮxternal hard drives, flash drives (USB), and memory cards, all these devices make data backup and sharing super easy.How to encrypt an external hard drive or USB on Linux.

How to encrypt an external hard drive or USB on macOS.How to encrypt an external hard drive or USB on Windows.How to encrypt data on an external hard drive.How encryption will protect data on your external storage devices.

External flash drives for mac