BitLocker takes care of encryption in Windows 8 again

Bitlocker is a security feature that was already present in Windows 7 and Windows Vista, which allows us to encrypt any drive on our computerto prevent third party access in case of theft, loss or unauthorized access.

In this article we will focus on analyzing the new features present in Windows 8 regarding Bitlocker, and in future publications we will show how to make use of this featurestep by step so that no user is left without being able to activate it because they don't know how to do it.

What's new in BitLocker in Windows 8

The following list of functionalities corresponds to those that can be used on a computer with Windows 8, since Bitlocker is also present in Windows Server 2012 with more new features that we will not analyze here because they are not relevant for us.

BitLocker Provisioning

In earlier versions of Windows, Bitlocker could not be used until after the operating system was installed. Now in Windows 8, this can be achieved even before the installation of the operating system itself.

This means that administrators have the ability to enable Bitlocker from the Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE), in order to get that drive pre-provisioned to make use of this feature.

This is accomplished with a randomly generated clear shield that is applied to a drive that is already formatted.If we choose the option to exclusively encrypt the space in use on the hard drive (a novelty that we will discuss below) this step can be completed in a few seconds.

Encryption of used disk space only

In Windows 7 Bitlocker forces you to encrypt all space on a drive, whether it's used space or free space. This could become a pain in the ass when dealing with large disks, because the process can take a long time when dealing with large amounts of storage.

Now in Windows 8, an administrator can choose whether Bitlocker should encrypt the entire volume or just the space that is being used The latter option will only encrypt the part of the disk that contains data, leaving the free space intact. This allows the encryption speed to vary based on the amount of data, rather than the total size of the drive.

Change Standard User PIN and Password

The changes to this feature are very useful for companies using Bitlocker, where users are divided into team administrators and regular users. When providing usernames and passwords to each employee, they were generally created randomly and employees had to memorize the resulting combinations, since only administrators with administrative privileges could modify Bitlocker options.

In Windows 8, although administrative privileges are still required to configure Bitlocker, by default all standard users have permissions to change their own Bitlocker PIN or passwordThis on the one hand allows standard users to choose personal combinations that are easy for them to remember, instead of a meaningless set of characters; but also allows administrators to use the same initial password or PIN settings for all computers.

In Welcome to Windows 8 | How to manage applications between different computers with Windows 8 and RT