Amidst the fireworks displays, backyard barbecues, and shopping trips that filled my four-day holiday weekend, I also found myself entangled in a modest mystery that literally arrived on my doorstep.

"If you encrypt your hard drive, you don't have to worry about data breaches" - John McAfee

In Part 1 we discussed the importance of choosing the right hardware for this project. We also noted the issues that can come up with mixing high-performance drives with moderate-performance CPUs. With all of that out of the way, we move on to the installation process.

Hardware BLUF:

• CPU: Intel Core i9-11980HK and above, AMD Zen 7xxx and above

• USB Drive: SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD V2

"Physical access trumps cybersecurity" - Bruce Schneier

Ubuntu’s latest installers make it easy to deploy encrypted Linux boxes. And there exists a number of guides already out there about how to build a live Linux USB drive. There also exists guidance on how to properly secure Ubuntu Linux from the start. But there is very little out there about how to do all of this at once.