Encrypting File System for Windows 2000

Description

This document provides an executive summary and a technical overview of the encrypting file system (EFS) that is included with the Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system.

EFS provides the core file encryption technology to store NTFS files encrypted on disk. EFS particularly addresses security concerns raised by tools available on other operating systems that allow users to access files from an NTFS volume without an access check. With EFS, data in NTFS files is encrypted on disk. The encryption technology used is public keybased and runs as an integrated system service, making it easy to manage, difficult to attack, and transparent to the user. If a user attempting to access an encrypted NTFS file has the private key to that file, the user is able to open the file and work with it transparently as a normal document. A user without the private key to the file is denied access.