In February 2008, a laptop was stolen from the trunk of a car owned by a medical researcher in the US. The personal and medical information of more than 1200 participants in a study was compromised because the data on the laptop had not been encrypted.
As we store information on different devices, encrypting the information is fast becoming a necessity. Fortunately, there are software programs available that will encrypt your important data.
Kruptos, which uses both 128- and 256-bit encryption, is one such program that is free and easy-to-use. Kruptos can be downloaded within a few minutes and is simple to install.
You can use Kruptos to transport files securely and to prevent unauthorised access. Kruptos scrambles the files ensuring that persons without a password cannot decrypt them. It lets you safely encrypt and transport files from your PC or USB drive in just a single operation. Thus, even if you lose your PC or USB device, nobody will be able to read the files since the data is encrypted. Kruptos also does not save a copy of your password in the encrypted file.
The new version of Kruptos has a file-shredding utility that lets you to delete files and their traces from your computer. Files deleted using this utility cannot be recovered even by the common file recovery programs.
You can also create self-extracting encrypted files using Kruptos. These are executable programs which can be run like ordinary software, by double-clicking them, and entering the correct password. They contain encrypted files and the software required to decompress their contents. The new version of Kruptos also maintains a record of the date and time details of the original (uncompressed) files.
Kruptos also lets you conceal sensitive filenames by renaming files with random character combinations during encryption. This prevents others from identifying a file by its name. You can view the original file name by supplying the encryption password.
To help you remember passwords, Kruptos allows you to include a password hint when you encrypt a file. $So choose a password hint that will help you recall your password. Without it, you will lose the encrypted data. Remember that Kruptos encrypts files based on your password, so the password is necessary for decryption.
Kruptos is a great way to transport files securely on portable storage devices like removable hard drives, USB drives, and so on. Kruptos currently works on Windows 2000, Windows 2003 and Windows XP.
Using Kruptos, you can encrypt multiple files and all known file types. The encrypted files are stored with the extension “.enc”. Kruptos can also integrate with Windows Explorer, allowing you to run it using Windows Explorer’s context menu.
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