How to Encrypt Your Mac’s Time Machine Backups

Worried about the security of your Mac’s backups? If you use Apple’s Time Machine, built into the fabric of OS X, you can put those worries at rest – because Apple has a way of encrypting your Time Machine backups automatically! What’s more, setup is extremely simple – all you have to do is tick a checkbox!

Here’s how it’s done:

To enable encryption on a NEW Time Machine backup, just connect the drive to your Mac, open the Time Machine system preference panel, select the drive as your backup destination, and click “Encrypt Backups.”

If you already have a Time Machine backup, you can still enable encryption after the fact. Just follow these steps:

• Open up the Time Machine pane in System Preferences.
• Next, turn off Time Machine, then click the “Select Disk…” button.
• Remove your current backup disk.
• Then, simply select the disk as your backup once again, and check the “Encrypt Backups” option and enter a password for the backup. Apple will now encrypt the entire backup drive – including your previous backups.
• Finally, turn Time Machine back on, and you’re all set!

Note: The ability to encrypt Time Machine backups is only available on OS X Lion 10.7.4 or later, and the ability to encrypt entire existing drive is only available on OS X Mountain Lion or later.

You will need OS X Lion 10.7.4 or OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 or newer to have the backup encryption option available, though the ability to encrypt existing drives only comes with Mountain Lion onward.

For more helpful tips for your Apple devices, check out our full collection of tutorials by visiting our How-To category!