Most businesses are comfortable with the idea of encrypting devices. After all, if a laptop is lost or stolen, encryption helps ensure company data doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
But, there is another side to encryption that is easy to overlook: what happens when the person being locked out is someone who should have access? Whether it's a hardware failure, a motherboard replacement, a BIOS update, or an unexpected change to security settings, there are situations where Windows may prompt for a BitLocker recovery key before allowing access to the device.
If you have the key, it's a minor inconvenience.
If you don't, things can become... much more complicated.
Tools like Microsoft BitLocker encrypt the contents of a device, so that the data can't be read without the right credentials. Bitlocker is a standard part of most Windows computers today. Apple has an equivalent called FileVault.
With Bitlocker enabled:
As part of the setup process, a recovery key is generated and stored somewhere secure
Despite the name, there's usually no physical key involved. An encryption key is simply a long string of letters, numbers and characters that acts as a mathematical password. For example, a BitLocker recovery key is typically a 48-digit number.
Without the correct key, the information remains inaccessible, regardless of how powerful the computer is. This is why backing up encryption keys is so important. Lose the key, and you risk losing access to the data forever.
Mac Filevault works slightly differently, your actual login credentials are the keys to Filevault unlocking the disk .That said, it does also generate a key for emergency purposes which can be backed up to iCloud or to a platform like Intune for businesses.
In our experience, most organisations aren't failing to encrypt devices, they're failing to keep track of where the recovery keys are stored.
The assumption is often that someone knows where they are... until the moment they're needed.
Recovery keys might be stored in Microsoft Entra ID, Intune, Active Directory, a password manager, or internal documentation. However, if nobody has clear ownership of that process, finding the right key can quickly become a stressful exercise.
One of the biggest misconceptions around BitLocker is that there must be a way to bypass it if the recovery key is lost.
There isn't.
That's the whole point of encryption. Without the correct key, access to the data may be permanently lost.
The consequences can include:
A single misplaced recovery key can turn a routine support request into a much larger problem.
Anyone who has followed Cryptocurrency will know the value of a private key. There are countless stories of people losing access to fortunes because they misplaced their credentials needed to unlock them. In one of the most famous cases, a man spent years trying to recover a hard drive containing his Bitcoin encryption key and his access to hundreds of millions of pounds after the device was accidentally discarded.
The technology may be different but the principle is the same: encryption is only as useful as your ability to manage the keys.
Every BitLocker-protected drive has one or more recovery keys associated with it, and you can back them up in several ways.
You can often find the recovery key in your Microsoft account:
The recovery key is commonly backed up automatically to:
In many organisations, users cannot see the key themselves, but IT administrators can retrieve it.
If one of your staff called IT right now because their laptop was asking for a BitLocker recovery key, how quickly could your team find it?
Minutes?
Hours?
Or would you need to start investigating where the key might be stored?
If you're not completely certain of the answer, ask your IT provider or IT team now. It's worth doing that now before you're faced with a real recovery scenario.
At IT Foundations, we help organisations by ensuring that their devices are encrypted and backed up, AND we keep those vital Bitlocker keys securely recorded too. You never know when they’ll be needed!
Good security isn't just about stopping unauthorised access. It's also about ensuring the right people can regain access when they need to.