Pro's and Cons of using Bitlocker... Any Good?

[malice19]

Hi All

I will be using a laptop out of the office and will require for it to be encrypted.

The laptop will have Win 7 Enterprise on so have the option to encrypt with Bitlocker but not sure how good it is?

Was just wondering how safe/good bitlocker is compared to other third party encryption software that can be purchased? As we have software called pointsec that we have already paid for but if bitlocker is any good then we might drop it once we roll out Win 7 to all computers if bitlocker is as good or better?

Can any one advise the Pro's and Con's using windows Bitlocker and how secure it really is compared to other standalone encryption software that can be paid for.

Thanks for your time.

[TheAnimus]

First question is do you have nice hardware TPM devices in all the laptops your planning to roll this out too?

If yes then the main downside will be a support one. Much harder to help if things are wrong when they want documents and spilt tea on the lappy, when your on a encrypted drive.

[malice19]

First question is do you have nice hardware TPM devices in all the laptops your planning to roll this out too?

If yes then the main downside will be a support one. Much harder to help if things are wrong when they want documents and spilt tea on the lappy, when your on a encrypted drive.

Yes All Dell laptops we have do have the TPM. If the laptop goes faulty for what ever reason does that mean i cant just take out the drive and put it into a USB HDD dock to decrypt it or does it have to be done in the laptop?

Cheers

[Splash]

Yes All Dell laptops we have do have the TPM. If the laptop goes faulty for what ever reason does that mean i cant just take out the drive and put it into a USB HDD dock to decrypt it or does it have to be done in the laptop?

Cheers

The TPM is a part of the encryption when you use it: without the TPM being present you can't decrypt your volume. If you configure Bitlocker not to use TPM it will require a USB key to store the key on - this key must be present when you start the system or the encrypted volume won't be available.

[chinny]

Assuming you (and the laptop) are in and AD environment then you can store the recovery key in AD which is what we do with our Dell laptops (also TPM). If the worst happens then you should be able to recover the data using the BitLocker Repair Tool (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928201).
There's a bit of pre-req work to do in AD if it's not already done though - http://blogs.technet.com/b/marcelodi...on-part-i.aspx

You could try that and make sure you test before going live to check it suits.....

[malice19]

Assuming you (and the laptop) are in and AD environment then you can store the recovery key in AD which is what we do with our Dell laptops (also TPM). If the worst happens then you should be able to recover the data using the BitLocker Repair Tool (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928201).
There's a bit of pre-req work to do in AD if it's not already done though - http://blogs.technet.com/b/marcelodi...on-part-i.aspx

You could try that and make sure you test before going live to check it suits.....

Cheers, think the store the recovery key in AD only works if you are using Windows Server 2008 and not 2003 like we are using.... but looking to upgrade soon.