The BBC has a report about a cool new feature for OS X that provides archive and restore capabilities that are usually found only in large well-run enterprise environments:

Apple has unveiled an auto-save system as part of an upgrade to its operating system (OS) designed for the Macintosh.

The Time Machine is a new feature in its forthcoming OS release, called Leopard, and lets users set auto-saves to hard drive or to online servers.

Files and folders can be backed-up and it also lets users search for files overwritten or altered in the past.

Excellent idea, but I wonder how they plan to handle the security of the archives. Can you encrypt them and, if so, how would you rotate and/or revoke the keys? Is there a secure-wipe function? I also wonder if the “alteration” detection is based on digests and, if so, whether the same capability will be made available for the running OS to detect suspicious activity?