Passphrase & private key recovery

[Migration User]

Hello- I contacted customer support and they directed me this way. I am using the Symantec Encryption Desktop Corporate and need to recover my passphrase and private key to encrypt my files from my vendor. If there is someone from technical support that could help me retrieve this as soon as possible, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[Migration User]

What scenario are we looking at?  Have you forgotten the passphrase for the key?  Is the key missing from your keyring?  Did you migrate to a new system, and need to know how to get your keypair from the original system?

Support has no method for recovering a key or a passphrase on our end, but if it is something along the lines of migrating to a new system, we can point you in the right direction:
the keyring files are located under the user's profile in My Documents\PGP.  If you move the keyrings to a new system, place them in a folder under My Documents named PGP, and when enrolling/licensing choose that you are an existing user.  Otherwise, the keyring location can be browsed to under Symantec Encryption Desktop by selecting PGP Keys, then selecting the Keys>Keyring Properties from the dropdown menu along the top.

[Migration User]

Hi Mike, thanks for the speedy response! Yes, its my fault- I forgot the passphrase/key. There's no way of resetting it?

[Migration User]

Nevermind, I recovered it- thank you!!

[Rob Cochran]

How did you recover your passphrase?

[Dallin Fyffe]

Hi Rob,

Usually when someone recovers their passphrase it is re-joining the key with Key Reconstruction.

Also, it's possible to have backups of the keypair, and since the passphrase tied to the key at the time of export could be different than the other version of the key, perhaps an older password worked for them.

Hope that helps, but I'm guessing the user who posed the question before won't be able to respond as it was part of our legacy forum and no longer exists (got ported over here to our new forum portal).

Thanks!

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Global Support Lead, Encryption
BRCM
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