Filesystem-level encryption: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:17, 10 July 2019

Revision as of 06:29, 19 April 2020

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'''Filesystem-level encryption''', often called '''file-based encryption''', '''FBE''', or '''file/folder encryption''', is a form of [[disk encryption]] where individual files or directories are [[encryption|encrypted]] by the [[file system]] itself.

This is in contrast to the [[full disk encryption]] where the entire partition or disk, in which the file system resides, is encrypted.

Types of filesystem-level encryption include:

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Unlike cryptographic file systems or [[full disk encryption]], general-purpose file systems that include filesystem-level encryption do not typically encrypt file system [[metadata]], such as the directory structure, file names, sizes or modification timestamps. This can be problematic if the metadata itself needs to be kept confidential. In other words, if files are stored with identifying file names, anyone who has access to the physical disk can know which documents are stored on the disk, although not the contents of the documents.

One exception to this is the encryption support being added to the [[ZFS]] filesystem. Filesystem metadata such as filenames, ownership, ACLs, extended attributes are all stored encrypted on disk. The ZFS metadata relating to the storage pool is stored in [[plaintext]], so it is possible to determine how many filesystems (datasets) are available in the pool, including which ones are encrypted. The content of the stored files and directories remain encrypted.

Another exception is [[CryFS]] replacement for [[EncFS]].