Just a small aside. Our help desk handles about 50 to 75 "I forgot my password" requests per day. This might be one small motivating factor why corporations desire an alternative method to recover encrypted files.
From my experience I'm sure most of those are due to daft password aging mechanisms.
over-frequent compulsory changes forcing a change at no notice (password expired - think of a new one RIGHT NOW) forcing a new password on Fridays (Monday morning: I know my _old_ password!) I have practically no trouble remembering numerous passphrases upwards of 20 mixed chars if I use them semi-regularly and they don't change often. Anyway, when I have forgotten a long passphrase it has only been temporarily - a few days. If your employee is reasonably confident of decrypting his work within the week you're no worse off than if he'd fluffed his cooking ("stand in boiling water" or something). -- ############################################################## # Antonomasia ant@notatla.demon.co.uk # # See http://www.notatla.demon.co.uk/ # ##############################################################