[HAL9000]

Physical access to any machine is pretty much the same as complete access. Mostly.

The next version of Mac OS X will have on-the-fly encryption/decryption of the user's home directory. With that system, mere physical access will not be sufficient for an unauthorized person to use your files.

[Ramius]

I'm not talking about access to encrypted files on a local box. There are any number of pretty good encryption tools available, have been for years. Windows has had "on the fly" encryption since 2K.

Yes, it can render hard drive data useless even if the machine is compromised. It can also render data useless if the user screws up. If you have users that never *ever* screw anything up I highly recommend having them encrypt their local data. Otherwise, you know of course that they'll be blaming YOU when their data is useless because they forgot their password on the day of the big presentation.

[Bush2000]

The next version of Mac OS X will have on-the-fly encryption/decryption of the user's home directory. With that system, mere physical access will not be sufficient for an unauthorized person to use your files.

The Mac's most secure feature is that nobody uses it.

[=Intervention=]

Very kewl. My hat's off to Apple yet again. (With that said, I'm sure there's some lag time in doing so. I'd be interesting in seeing how this runs on a G4 500, for instance...)