Enrcyption Software
 

I am looking for encryption software. Hopefully freeware.

What I would like is something that lets me encrypt some files and then opens/closes in a self-extracting manner. This way I don't have to actually carry the software with me. Is there such a thing? The files would be on a separate memory device and not on the actual machine that has the encryption software.

Thanks in advance.

M8

For free? How strict are your security standards? Some of the best free-ware stuff is true-crypt, but requires you to have the TrueCrypt binary for decryption.

There is something called AxCrypt, which I have not used but is Windows only.

The next best thing I could think of would be IronKey. This is more of an encrypt-able USB thumb-drive though.

https://www.ironkey.com/personal-solutions

I *think* you can encrypt a thumb drive or portable HD, etc. with true crypt, then use your desktop machine or laptop to launch the software and mount again. My perception that any machine you use to access the files would need truecrypt installed was incorrect per posts below.

I tried ironkey and wasn't impressed. Lots of bugs and problems.

+1 on TrueCrypt, but one point of clarification. The machine that you want to use the thumbdrive on would NOT need TrueCrypt installed. You can copy the TrueCrypt binaries to the thumbdrive itself and launch it from there without installing to the host machine.

TrueCrypt isn't full volume encryption though. You create a file as big as you want, lets say 100MB, and that file becomes a password protected volume that you mount in Windows. It simply appears as another drive. You can move that 100MB TrueCrypt volume wherever you want: put it on your laptop, your desktop, thumbdrive, etc.

I have a 20MB TrueCrypt volume that I keep sensitive documents in, and I keep the volume inside of one of my Live Sync folders, so the TrueCrypt volume keeps itself in sync on all of my machines.

Another approach is true full volume encryption, like BitLocker (built into Windows Vista and 7). With BitLocker To Go (Windows 7 only) you can encrypt an entire thumbdrive so that it prompts you for a password as soon you insert the drive. The only problem with that is if you insert a BitLocker'd thumbdrive in an XP or Vista machine, you will only have read only access to the thumdrive. Only Windows 7 can write to a BitLocker enabled thumbdrive.

TrueCrypt will also encrypt an entire volume or partition. I use it for all my portable drives.

Hi,

About a year ago I was looking for the same thing. I tried a few different applications and finally settled on Cryptainer (http://www.cypherix.com/cryptainerle/) The "LE" version is free (limited to 25MB), and I liked it so much after a week I upgraded to the paid version will allows for larger volumes.

What I like about it is that when you run the application, once you enter your password, the encrypted files show up as a virtual drive - so you can make folders, copy, rename, search, etc.

They also provide an application that you can put on a USB stick to encode and decode the files, so you don't need the parent software installed on all your machines.

I had my computer crash when I had this software open (unstable computer, nothing to do with their software), and I was impressed that it didn't corrupt the encrypted files. I thought for sure I had lost everything, but after a reboot, everything worked fine.

Just my 0.02

My company makes us use PGP software, which encrypts any USB stick that is attached to the computer. You can "format" the device so it is transportable, and can be opened on other computers using your password and software loaded on the stick.

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What software is it?

At a guess PGP Software!

I wasnt sure if they were using PGP in the specific commercial or more general sense. But you are probably right about it being the specific sense.

Based on the description, they're probably using PGP Endpoint Device Control. This software is enterprise class; it requires a server to design and enforce policy. A Windows executable is deposited on the encrypted device (e.g. USB stick) that turns the encrypted volume into an new drive that can be accessed by any Windows app. I've stress tested it; it works pretty well.

The freeware CypherixLE is what I am now using. It seems to be sufficient for my needs and is easy to use.

Thanks for all the feedback! ^

A nice feature of TrueCrypt is that when you encrypt your whole hard drive, you can set it to require a password on boot with a message. For example on mine, when you boot you get a message that says "Operating System not Found" and you type your password in without it displaying on the screen. So the casual thief or over enthusiastic TSA worker thinks the hard drive is toast anyway.

^
+1
Makes crossing borders that much faster :p

TrueCrypt

(I'm an IT Manager, btw.)