Security firm Sophos has dished out a new data encryption tool for Mac users, allowing them to protect their data against theft of private and official information.
The Sophos SafeGuard Disk Encryption for Mac will allow users to secure the data on a single MacBook or across several thousand MacBooks and PCs. The application is part of the Sophos SafeGuard data protection family. 
More and more organisations are adding Macs and MacBook to their list of supported devices, ranging from small to mid-sized organisations and not just design studios and academic institutions.
One of the most prominent reasons behind supporting Mac devices is that the number of employees and customers switching to Macs and MacBooks is increasing and the companies are vying to support their systems with their own, according to a recent report released by research firm Gartner.
The need for data encryption tools on Macs is vital as Mac users, similar to PC users, store personal information such as social security codes and bank credentials along with sensitive company data on their systems. A recently released security report by a prominent anti-virus firm had indicated at the rise in malicious third party applications on Apple’s platform, that allowed hackers to gain remote control over a system or steal valuable information.
The new data encryption tool will allow organisations to encrypt their data using AES 256-bit encryption algorithm and offer optimized data encryption to boost the performance. The application will also come with sophisticated power-on user authentication (POA) technology which will allow only authorized individuals to access the Mac hard drives. The tool will continue to encrypt the data even after the hard drive is removed from a Mac.
