If you have some sensitive information on your computer which are ‘for your eyes only’, it is important to make sure they are adequately protected. While you can apply broad security such as Windows permissions or through drive encryption (TrueCrypt, etc.), a simple and effective method is to compress them in a password protected zip file.
Any zip client worth its salt will allow you to create a password protected archive, so odds are you already have everything you need. Whenever anyone tries to open the the zip file, they will have to enter the password to continue. This is also a great way to securely transfer files over email. As with any protection by password, you will want to make sure you use a strong password.
If you have lots of files you are protecting, you can include them in a single zip archive. Additionally, you can set the compression method to low or none if you want to minimize the time it takes to save and load your files from the archive.
Jason Faulkner is the man who brings you our daily tips. He is based in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Older winzip encryption schemes are trivial to bypass – there are password crackers that can either read the password from the file, or hit it with 100 million passwords per second from a home PC.
Go for up-to-date winzip, or better still, WinRAR. Both support 256-bit AES encryption schemes that are good enough for DOD and you really won’t notice that it’s beefed up. i.e. – no loss in performance.
Either way, if you want to be safe couple the above method with a tool to securely erase the original file after you’ve made the zipped / rarred copy. Recovery of a freshly deleted file is also rather trivial.