File Share Encryption

Hello,

First I am fairly new to our company and trying to understand PGP for the first time.  Our company has previously avoided encrypting any SSD's because our users complained about serious performance issues following the encryption.  To maintain performance, we install a secondary drive on each users system and enrcrypt that drive, but leave the primary drive alone.  We would like to get away from this, and in a recent phone conversation with a Symantec Support Specialist, they insisted if we upgraded, we wouldn't run into the same issues and could indeed encrypt the SSD drives without performance loss.  I was skeptical so I wanted to ask here.

Currently I am running the following:

Server Version: 10.2.0 (Build 2526), and it just installed on a VM

PGP Desktop Versions: 3.2.0 (Build 2526), about 80 Encrypted Computers

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

If you want to get to the latest version of the server then you would have to upgrade to 3.3.1 MP1 first then upgrade to 3.3.2. 

The file that you'll need from file connect is SymantecEncryption3.3.1MP1_PUP.zip and 3.3.2_PUP.zip

After upgrading to the first PUP give the server about 48hrs before upgrading to the latest version so the schema can finish updating from the update.

https://symantec.flexnetoperations.com/control/symc/registeranonymouslicensetoken

If your account is not up to date to get the latest software then you'll have to call Customer Care to update your account and get a new serial key for the latest software.

Customer Care# 1-800-721-3934

The latest version of PGP will work with SSD.  There is some issues with Self-Encrypting Drives.  Make sure the drivers are up to date.

If you run into any issues with encryption then open a case with Technical Support.

Thanks

Anthony

I've encrypted quite a few SSDs in the past and had no issues.  Make sure the Firmware on the SSD's themselves is bang up-to-date would be my primary bit of advice.

(those version numbers are the wrong way round btw :) the server is 3.x and client is 10.x)

To be honest those current versions you describe work with SSD's, what sort of performance issues are you seeing?  With any encryption product there will always be a 5-10% performance hit, its the nature of the beast.  My experience is that its more about managing end users expectations rather than saying "its an SSD therefore itll still be super dooper quick" - it will be slower, it will take longer to load.  If they know that going in their gripes will be massively reduced.

I appreciate the help from both of you.  Regarding how the users complain, right now by encrypting a secondary drive our users get the PGP Logon Boot screen regardless, so we were going to encrypt the primary drives without telling them and see if we get reports back on performance issue.  The performance complaints come from our dev department where Visual Studio is used and they are opening projects with many files.

I was quickly skimming through documentation, and found that client 10.2.x is still compatible any upgrade availabe.  Can either of you confirm that this is still true with Server 3.3.2?

Again, thanks for your help.

An additional question regarding the upgrades:

Since on our server, we are already running 3.2.0, and as you described we only require the recent PUP updates (version 3.3.1 MP1 first then upgrade to 3.3.2 a few days later), is it still necessary to back up our organization key and data?

I ask because in the upgrade manual it mentions that PUP updates "preserve you data and system settings", however right below this in the documentation it says "When you install the software, the data on the system is deleted".  I was left a little confused and worried.

Do these PUP updates simply update? And I don't have to worry about anything else like running these backups like it suggests?  Regardless, our server is on VM and we will be taking a snapshot prior to the upgrade, but I wanted to skip the Sympantec suggested backup for this PUP update if possible.

Thanks!

Found this documentation... Not need for a response to this post.  Thanks!

If you take a snapshot, then you're alright.  It retains all settings and thjings like that, so a snapshot is more than sufficient incase anything goes horribly wrong

Great, so to confirm, the PUP updates are just updates and nothing is blown away?

Correct