NAS with encryption

[htsource]

New member here, I've been asked to source a NAS for a branch office to have encryption option so if someone walk off with the NAS, without knowing the password and encryption key, can't get access to the data.

Is this easy to accomplish? I know there is backup software can do encryption on the fly so say when backing up from local PC to NAS, it's encrypted. But I don't know how trust worthy this method is.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[corndog]

Well,

It might be a bit of a workaround, but you could look into TrueCrypt...

 

[scotty]

TrueCrypt is the most popular free and open-sourced encryption program, but not quite sure how well it would work for you here. All of its different modes of operation are more or less assuming its working on a local PC of some kind. I don't think it would work too well in a NAS situation. Encryption is usually handled by the host operating system, so as such you would want the NAS to support it. Anything done remotely be a client PC probably isn't going to work too well once you have more than 1 PC accessing the system.

Perhaps look into Windows' EFS (encrypting file system) which all the server and client OS's support to some extent. If the NAS supports Active Directory user support, which many do, you might be able to impliment EFS.

This might be a good question for Mr Higgins as he has a lot more experience with NAS's and might be able to recommend one that natively supports encryption.

The other half of the battle would be physically securing the NAS with some sort of cable lock, or in a lockable rack in a locked room.

 

[claykin]

New member here, I've been asked to source a NAS for a branch office to have encryption option so if someone walk off with the NAS, without knowing the password and encryption key, can't get access to the data.

Is this easy to accomplish? I know there is backup software can do encryption on the fly so say when backing up from local PC to NAS, it's encrypted. But I don't know how trust worthy this method is.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

QNAP's TS-239Pro and higher support AES256 volume encryption. Note that an encrypted volume will slow down NAS transfer rates. Take a look in the QNAP forums for more details on how much of a performance hit the NAS takes when the volume is encrypted.

Also, here's a comparison chart of the QNAP models.

http://www.qnap.com/images/products/comparison/Comparison_NAS.html

About 1/2 way down the list you'll see Disk Management. look there for the models that support volume encrypt.