Bitlocker Encryption

To help protect both your personal and college-related data, your computer has been encrypted. This means that if your device is ever lost or stolen, the information on it will be protected.

As part of this security feature, a special 48-character recovery key is created. Most of the time, you won’t need this key. However, after certain system updates—like firmware updates—your computer might ask for it before it can start up.

Step 1 is to restart the machine to see if it will come up without the key.

If that does not resolve it then contact the Help Desk to get the key. If it happens outside normal business hours, you can retrieve the recovery key yourself by following these steps.