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Level 1

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What does “FileVault: No (Encrypted at rest)” mean?

I have a new MacBook Air 2020 running Catalina 10.15.6 and I'm asking about the encryption on the internal SSD. When I run "diskutil apfs list" it shows that both the "Macintosh HD" and "Macintosh HD - Data" volumes have the following:

FileVault: No (Encrypted at rest)

What does this mean? If these drives are already encrypted at rest, should I, or do I need to, turn on Filevault to protect the data on them in case my MacBook is stolen?

MacBook

Posted on Aug 19, 2020 3:53 AM

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HWTech

Level 9

60,284 points

Posted on Aug 19, 2020 7:33 PM

The MBAir 2020 uses a T2 security chip which automatically uses hardware encryption on the SSD all the time. Filevault is a "software" solution and is still available as well on Macs with a T2 security chip so that a user password is necessary to unlock the SSD.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208344

https://www.macobserver.com/tips/deep-dive/apple-t2-security-chip-disk-storage

More technical details of T2 security chip:

https://www.apple.com/euro/macbook-pro-13/docs/a/Apple_T2_Security_Chip_Overview.pdf

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What does “FileVault: No (Encrypted at rest)” mean?

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