> As Green puts it, “Your computer is now only as secure as that database of keys held by Microsoft, which means it may be vulnerable to hackers, foreign govern

> As Green puts it, “Your computer is now only as secure as that database of keys held by Microsoft, which means it may be vulnerable to hackers, foreign governments, and people who can extort Microsoft employees.” One way to think about this: before Win10, my computer was only as secure as the car I sometimes left it in, not to mention that it was only as secure as a bag which I admit I sometimes left out of my sight in coffee shops for seconds at a time. Overall this is a great win. The NSA is not the only actor that FDE secures us from: FDE is more critically protection from anyone who can smash the window of your car or grab your computer in a public place and run. Security is always full of compromises, and MS here is making a compromise to provide protection from the latter group without significantly damaging data availability. Think about this from a C/I/A perspective - that is, Confidentiality/Integrity/Availability as the security industry often discusses. Will-implemented encryption, with as few parties as possible in control of the key (e.g. only the data owner), is excellent for confidentiality and integrity. However, it can have severe impacts on availability if the key is lost. Controlling availability often requires policy and procedure controls (e.g. manually keeping a backup of the key on media stored in a secure place) which cannot simply be automatically enabled like FDE can. Users who are worried about protection from actors like the NSA must take significantly more stringent security measures, including less technical policy and procedural controls, and Windows gives them the capability to do so by re-encrypting without backup to Microsoft and making their own backup which they can manage as they see fit.