Feature Request: Auto Close/Lock Vault After Inactivity Period

rerouted

I love Knox and like the backup vault feature it has as well. I have it back-up my vaults every night on my server. Sometimes I forget to close them and when I wake up the next morning I get an error of course that it can't back up the vault because it's mounted. Can you implement a feature like 1Password (Auto-lock keychain) that auto locks/unmounts your vault after a set time of inactivity? That would sure help with my problem I have.



Keep up the great work, love your products and constant updates!

Gilles9

Agreed, very good idea

MikeT

[quote name='rerouted' timestamp='1280975515' post='7789']

I love Knox and like the backup vault feature it has as well. I have it back-up my vaults every night on my server. Sometimes I forget to close them and when I wake up the next morning I get an error of course that it can't back up the vault because it's mounted. Can you implement a feature like 1Password (Auto-lock keychain) that auto locks/unmounts your vault after a set time of inactivity? That would sure help with my problem I have.



Keep up the great work, love your products and constant updates!

[/quote]

Hi rerouted, welcome to the forums!



It's a great idea.



I want to explain why auto-lock is a much more complicated situation for Knox than 1Password.



The problem with auto-locking is how to handle the file operations when trying to close the vaults. Imagine that you're editing a file from a vault with Pages, you left the computer for 15 minutes and now Knox locks the vault with the file still open in Page. What happens to the integrity of the data as Knox close it? This operation could corrupt the file. If Knox tries to create a copy of the file in the vault from the previous save, how does Pages react after the vault is closed and locked?



What are the security precautions for leaving a file temporarily in Pages?



Waiting for somebody to close Pages still won't work because if you forgot about it and left it open overnight, you'll still get the error and security will be massively vulnerable since you'll leave the computer thinking that Knox will auto-lock itself.



This is why 1Password and Knox can't have the same auto-lock system, they have two completely different environment. 1Password is in total control of all the data from end to end. Knox doesn't have that, it's vulnerable to the users' action.





You may notice that OS X also does not have the automatic dismount for mountable drives, it's for precisely the same reasons. Remember those warning prompts when you take out a USB drive without ejecting it first in the OS?



Anyway, I hope this helps point out the complexity with the automatic auto-lock system for Knox.