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Security

Mobile Device Encryption

You should avoid storing sensitive information on mobile devices like flashdrives, CD’s or DVD’s

Nearly everyone at Hopkins has access to a local area network, and many networks can be securely accessed outside of Hopkins through a virtual private network. If you have secure remote access to a file server (e.g. H: drive), you should almost never need to store sensitive data locally on workstations, flash drives or laptops. You should be able to access your files through the network, and you enjoy the benefit of regular back-ups and protection against malicious code that can be attached to Office documents.

Thumbdrive (Flashdrive) Encryption

Johns Hopkins recommends use of the Lexar secure thumb drive the SPARS [http://spars.jhu.edu] Website. Lexar can be used by Mac and Linux. We recommend that you consult with your IT administrator to determine whether the department has purchased these drives for use.

Zip Files

If you don’t have an encrypted drive or CD, you should consider saving information in an encrypted ZIP format. Most file compression products (e.g. Winzip, 7zip [http://www.7-zip.org/]) allow users to encrypt one or more files. This can be useful ensuring that sensitive files are encrypted. These tools work on multiple machines and you can store many documents in the same encrypted folder.