Protecting your sensitive data

[Jim]

Protecting data isn't difficult. How many articles have we seen lately with non-encrypted sensitive personal information stored on laptops which have been stolen or sent in the post on a DVD disk? It just makes my blood run cold the way government and companies treat data so clumsily. And how many of us have sensitive or private data on our own PCs at home? Bank account information, photos, documents etc. that can be used to harm or embarass us. And it especially angers me when I know it can be protected easily, cheaply and even free.

I use a simple free program called Truecrypt from (truecrypt.org on the net) that's worked like a charm for me. Although I've only created encrypted files, it can also be used for creating encrypted volumes from a drive or partition or removable drives (like USB flash drives or disks). I put one on the network and it worked great. Although I haven't tried with multiple users at the same time on the same file.

It's easy to use and all I need to do is open the file I created (and it isn't limited to small files like most free programs), select the drive letter I want to mount it to and type in my password. Once the volume is mounted it acts as if it's just another drive on the system. Say I select drive M to mount it to. All I have to do is browse the files on drive M, read or write, create folders, delete and anything else I can do to a normal drive. Once I dismount it or close down my laptop everything is automatically closed off. All that appears is a file which can't be read without Truecrypt and the password. The space available for the drive is whatever the original volume size you specified when you created it. I have tried some over 4GB without a problem. I don't think there's a built in limit to the size with this program. Files are encrypted/decrypted on the fly and don't cache to the hard drive. If someone steals your laptop or PC they can't open the files and won't even be able to determine what the files are if you give them a file extension other than the default '.tc' extension.

Another feature is hidden volumes. Let's say some one knows you have an encrypted volume. They force you to give them the password at gunpoint. A hidden volume is one created inside a normal volume. It simply uses a different password. You can't see or determine if a volume is hidden or not. You mount the same file but type in a different password. Instead of the normal files and folders in the volume you will see the hidden volume files and folders. One can't be differentiated from another. If you give them the password to the volume not containing true sensitive material then they won't know otherwise.

If this program has any faults, it's simply that it doesn't create individual encrypted files that can be extracted with only a password. Whatever file you create will have to be extracted by someone using Truecrypt. If you need to protect your data try this program out. It's the best free encryption program I've ever tried myself.

[Jim]

Sorry about the double hit here. I only submitted once and only just now realised it was on here twice. Ahhh the magic of the internet...