Maybe your laptop contains your company’s database and you’re
carrying it around on a business trip. Oh boy, would you be in
trouble if that file got into the wrong hands. You need encryption.
Windows XP Professional has built-in encryption per file and
folder, but if you need stronger and easy to use encryption,
Cryptex will do the job. It uses up to 448-bit AES, Blowfish, and
Triple DES encryption.
Cryptex creates a virtual hard drive, what it calls a “vault,” on
your hard drive or a USB thumb drive. The 30-day trial of Cryptex
lets you create one vault; you can create more than one when you
pay for the program, which costs between $45 (up to 6GB vaults) and
$119 (up to 100GB vaults). Once you’ve created a vault through the
software, you can work from it as if it were a folder — you just
have to start up Cryptex to access it.
When I created a 50MB Cryptex vault on my USB thumb drive, the
vault appeared as a separate drive in the My Computer area. This
may get confusing during everyday use. Opening and using files in
the vault seemed just as quick as with a regular, unencrypted
folder on my hard drive, so speed isn’t an issue.
If you do want to lock just one folder on your drive, Cryptex will
be too much program for you. You might look at Folder
Lock for that purpose.
–Jennifer Berger
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