Vault encryption

If you protect a vault with encryption, anything written to the vault will be encrypted and anything read from it will be decrypted transparently by the storage node, using a vault-specific encryption key stored on the node. In case the storage medium is stolen or accessed by an unauthorized person, the malefactor will not be able to decrypt the vault contents without access to the storage node.

This encryption has nothing to do with the archive encryption specified by the backup plan and performed by an agent. If the archive is already encrypted, the storage node-side encryption is applied over the encryption performed by the agent.

To protect the vault with encryption

  1. Select the Encrypt check box.
  2. In the Enter the password field, type a password.
  3. In the Confirm the password field, re-type the password.
  4. Select one of the following:
    • AES 128 – the vault contents will be encrypted using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm with a 128-bit key
    • AES 192 – the vault contents will be encrypted using the AES algorithm with a 192-bit key
    • AES 256 – the vault contents will be encrypted using the AES algorithm with a 256-bit key.
  5. Click OK.

The AES cryptographic algorithm operates in the Cipher-block chaining (CBC) mode and uses a randomly generated key with a user-defined size of 128, 192 or 256 bits. The larger the key size, the longer it will take for the program to encrypt the archives stored in the vault and the more secure the archives will be.

The encryption key is then encrypted with AES-256 using a SHA-256 hash of the password as a key. The password itself is not stored anywhere on the disk; the password hash is used for verification purposes. With this two-level security, the archives are protected from any unauthorized access, but recovering a lost password is not possible.

Vault encryption