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IT Community Partnerships Indiana University

PGP Retirement – January 4

Posted on by mkleine

IT Professionals:

UITS is retiring PGP. PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption software was implemented at IU in Spring of 2009 to make it possible for students, faculty, and staff to encrypt disk drives on their devices as a means of better protecting themselves and the university in the event of device loss or theft. At that time, many operating systems did not support native whole disk encryption and PGP was a viable alternative. As all modern operating systems support native whole disk encryption, PGP is no longer needed.

Please check the linked impact list to confirm if you support current or past users of PGP encryption software.

Beginning January 4, 2021, the LSERV team will begin deleting devices that PGP reports an agent actively installed but not reporting to the console between the years of 2010 and 2015 (excluding device encryption).

IT Community Partnerships is hosting an impact spreadsheet [1] that identifies IT Pro/Support contacts for departments utilizing PGP (Depts and IT Support tab) and lists enrolled devices by department identified in the PGP console and by date of last check-in to the console (PGP Devices by Dept 2010 – 2015 and PGP Devices by Dept 2016 – 2020 tabs). Each line in the device tabs also includes information on system name, client IP, status (Status column indicating level of encryption), and additional information.

The Excel spreadsheet contains two tabs that categorize computers by the year of last check-in to the PGP console (year last seen): PGP Devices by Dept 2010 – 2015 and PGP Devices by Dept 2016 – 2020.

UITS Leveraged Services is asking IT Pros/Support identified in the Depts and IT Support tab to do the following for computers listed in the PGP Devices by Dept 2010 – 2015 tab by December 31, 2020 and for computers listed in the PGP Devices by Dept 2016 – 2020 tab by March 31, 2021:

  1. Remove PGP from any install images and/or new installs. (new enrollments are disabled).
  2. Locate listed computers for departments you support or confirm that the computers no longer exist (note the “Date of Last Check-In” column in the lists).
  3. If computers exist, unencrypt encrypted computers, disks, and locations.
  4. Uninstall PGP agents from your devices.
  5. Re-encrypt devices using BitLocker, FileVault, or alternative encryption software.

If your machines are beyond lifecycle replacement, we recommend you replace these machines.

Thank you so much for helping us retire PGP. If you have any questions concerning the steps, please contact sct2@iu.edu.

–IT Community Partnerships on behalf of Leveraged Services

[1] Impact List [IU Login Required]:  https://uisapp2.iu.edu/confluence-prd/download/attachments/598835288/PGP%20Impact%20List.pdf

~~~~~ Today’s IT Pro Tip ~~~~~

For the most current information on transitioning to virtual learning, faculty can continue to find resources on the Keep Teaching website. Students can find more information and resources on the Keep Learning website.  These websites will continue to be updated with new resources.

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