Secure your data for free!

July 17th, 2006 - By: Alex Bailey

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After playing around for a while with free and pay software, I've finally found two programs that do exactly what I need. The first one is TrueCrypt. This program is used to encrypt whole drives with on the fly encryption. You can encrypt an entire partition with this piece of open source software. In a world where online banking is becoming extremely popular, this is an essential tool. You can save all your personal files to the encrypted volume, and it's completely safe. There are a wide variety of encrypytion methods you can use, from well known ones to less popular ones.

This is a benchmark on how fast it can encrypt/decrypt data on the fly. To use TrueCrypt:

Download their software.
Follow the installation instructions, and open the TrueCrypt interface.
Click the "Create Volume" button. Click "Next".
Create a file anywhere you'd like, I use C:\Vault as my filename.
Click the "Select File" button and find the file you've created.
Select your encryption methods, the defaults work fine. For a more details on the different encryption methods you can go here or here. Click "Next"
Select the size of your volume, depending on what you're storing 128 MBs or so should be fine. Click "Next"
Enter a secure password, and confirm it. (Recommended is 20 characters.) Click "Next"
Move your mouse around on the next screen for a few seconds, and then click "Format", and when done Click "Exit".
You should be left with the TrueCrypt screen again. Select the file you choose (I used C:\Vault) and click "Mount"
Select drive a drive, I use Z:
Enter your password at the prompt, and look in My Computer and look for the drive you used. (I used Z:)

What's secure data without a way to securely delete it? When you click "Empty Recycle" been, that does almost nothing. The only way to delete data off a hard drive, without physically destroying the drive itself, is to overwrite the data. There are many algorithms to do this, but the best is Peter Gutmann's method. It overwrites your data 35 times with random data. The program I recommend using is called "Eraser", can be found here. It like TrueCrypt is open source. It's pretty self explanatory to use, when installed just right click on files and click "Erase". This goes for erasing all files in the Recycle Bin as well. Make sure the method for erasing files is set to Gutmann Method before you use it, as it is the most secure.
Eraser