When you enable FileVault on your Mac, you in effect prevent anyone from accessing your data without your password. Without encryption, someone can remove your Mac’s hard drive or boot to an alternative mode such as Target Disk mode and then access your data from another system; however, with encryption these efforts will be fruitless since your data is encrypted. This may be desired, but if you back up your Mac, then unless your backups are also encrypted you might undermine the purpose of using FileVault in the first place. Continue reading →