OS X offers different tiers of protection that have evolved over time. Chris Hoffman, writing for HowToGeek.com, walks you through these levels, explains the weaknesses at each level.
Even if your Mac is securely encrypted, anyone with access to it — for example, a thief who stole your MacBook — could enter recovery mode and use the “Reinstall OS X” option to wipe your entire hard drive. This at least protects your personal files from a thief — they’ll just have to start over from scratch. However, it means a thief can quickly wipe your Mac and start using it.
Spoiler alert, best bet is to make a reliable backup of your Mac, enable FileVault encryption, use a password everywhere you can and use a different password at every opportunity.
UPDATE: Reader Beau Baldwin suggested a link to Apple’s Find My Mac page to round out this topic. Excellent idea, Beau!
Agree with all. 1Password makes password management a breeze. Multiple password vaults makes it easy to share common, strong passwords with coworkers.
I wonder why it took so long for Apple to put keychain in the “cloud”. I mean it really does not need to be in the cloud. i would think there could be an option to export/import an encrypted keychain file – so long as you had that ‘master’ password….
Full drive encryption is always a great idea – as is overwriting deleted files (at least once).
The Secure Erase feature in CleanMyMac erases sensitive files properly. And it’s just an all around nice utility.
in the cloud makes it seamless between Apple devices/Safari, though. Export/import of a keychain breaks that and is a non-obvious process for the vast majority of people.
For those who are paranoid about security on Mac but feel unsafe to encrypt the whole disc, Hider 2 can be a solution (by MacPaw, the developer of CleanMyMac). The app encrypts and hides files. Password-protected.