Remember the good old days?
The days when, if you wanted to encrypt files on Windows, the answer was easy. Just install TrueCrypt and you’d be good to go.
Then TrueCrypt crashed and burned in epic fashion and everyone was scrambling to figure out TrueCrypt alternatives.
The easiest and most common alternative, and the one I usually recommend, is to use BitLocker. The nice thing about BitLocker is that it is built in to some versions of Microsoft Windows. That’s the method I describe in my Paperless Security Guide.
BitLocker is good, some people don’t feel comfortable using an encryption software created by a large software vendor. They’d like things to be more open.
David Whelan has an interesting article on alternatives called No More Encryption with Truecrypt, where he discusses the issue.
Truecrypt was a well-loved open source encryption tool that sputtered to an end when its anonymous developers said they’d no longer support it. Following a code audit, which came up clean, there was a collective sigh of relief that the last known good version could still be used.
No longer. Two security holes have been reported and the project’s at the end of its road. If you haven’t already moved on, it’s time.
He points to some alternatives, and Veracrypt in particular looks like an interesting project based on TrueCrypt.
Do you encrypt your files on Windows? What do you use?
