Details
This policy setting allows you to control how BitLocker-protected removable data drives are recovered in the absence of the required credentials. This policy setting is applied when you turn on BitLocker.
Select ‘Omit recovery options from the BitLocker setup wizard’ to prevent users from specifying recovery options when they enable BitLocker on a drive. This means that you will not be able to specify which recovery option to use when you enable BitLocker, instead BitLocker recovery options for the drive are determined by the policy setting.
The recommended state for this setting is: Enabled: True (checked).
Rationale:
Administrators should always have a safe, secure way to access encrypted data in the event users cannot access their data.
Additionally, as with any authentication method, a drive can be compromised by guessing or finding the authentication information used to access the drive.
To use BitLocker a Data Recovery Agent will need to be configured for removable drives. To recover a drive will require highly-controlled access to the Data Recovery Agent private key.
Impact:
The ability to manually select recovery options for removable drives will not be presented to the user in the BitLocker setup wizard.
Solution
To establish the recommended configuration via GP, set the following UI path to Enabled: True (checked):
Computer ConfigurationPoliciesAdministrative TemplatesWindows ComponentsBitLocker Drive EncryptionRemovable Data DrivesChoose how BitLocker-protected removable drives can be recovered: Omit recovery options from the BitLocker setup wizard
Note: This Group Policy path may not exist by default. It is provided by the Group Policy template VolumeEncryption.admx/adml that is included with the Microsoft Windows 7 & Server 2008 R2 Administrative Templates (or newer).
Default Value:
Recovery options for removable drives are selectable by the user in the BitLocker setup wizard.
Supportive Information
The following resource is also helpful.
This security hardening control applies to the following category of controls within NIST 800-53: Risk Assessment.This control applies to the following type of system Windows.