The unbiased reviews and trending computer technology news just for you Tech Geeks!
Best Free Encryption Software to Protect Your Data
The importance of keeping your data safe is becoming more important than ever. Encrypting is the only way to secure your files and folders on a Windows PC. Once encrypted you are the only one that can access them which provides privacy and protection to your data. I carefully put together some of the best free encryption software you can use to keep your valuable data safe and secure.
What is Encryption?
Encryption is a method to keep all your digital assets safe. The encryption process uses a key and an algorithm to transform the data into an encoded piece of information that can only be deciphered by authorized people.
Read more… What Is End-To-End Encryption?
According to “The 2019 Global Encryption Trends Study”, 45% of the organizations have an encryption policy in place to secure the most important data.
Whether your data is stored on the PC or sent over the internet, encryption is essential to protect it. Encrypting your data is essential to protect it, no matter if it is stored locally or sent over the Internet.
Without encryption, you and I wouldn’t be able to do our banking online. We wouldn’t be able to buy things online, because your credit cards – they’ve probably been ripped off anyway, but they would be ripped off left and right every day if there wasn’t encryption.
Tim Cook
You can enhance the protection of your data with the help of free encryption software. They can protect your data from malicious actors.
I’ve put together this list of best free encryption software to choose from.
Best Free Encryption Software
BitLocker
BitLocker a built-in encryptor within Windows Operating System. But it is not available for the home edition of Windows.
You can encrypt the whole disk in Windows using BitLocker. It uses AES 128 and 256-bit encryption to encrypt data on the drives.
When BitLocker is activated whatever new files created will be added to the encryption automatically.
OneDrive
OneDrive, one of the best free encryption software provides encrypted storage called Personal Vault. It is built into Windows itself with 5 GB of online storage space. Terabyte storage is available for paid subscribers.
There are few steps to do for the first time to set it up. After that, you need to authorize the access using the Microsoft Authenticator app on your mobile device. Once you are authorized you can get access to a secure encrypted storage area on OneDrive.
No one can gain access to your OneDrive account unless you authorize them to use the Authenticator app.
OneDrive’s Personal Vault can also be accessed online in a browser at onedrive.com. With the free account, only three files can be stored which can be zip files that could contain multiple files. Whereas there are no limits with an Office 365 subscription.
7-Zip
7-Zip is an open-source and free utility for compressing files into archives. It is capable of commonly used 256-bit AES encryption.
It can be downloaded from its website 7zip.com
Read More: Secure Password With 1Password, Best Password Manager
EncryptOnClick
EncryptOnClick is a simple free utility from 2BrightSparks that makes it easy to encrypt and decrypt files on Windows PCs. It uses 256-bit AES encryption, and it works with files or folders.
You can either choose the files using the program or right-click on the files in explorer. The original files are automatically deleted once they are encrypted by default. There is also an option to keep the files if you want. This option is useful when you want to send the encrypted files by email and keep the original files for yourself.
VeraCrypt
VeraCrypt is an open-source and different type of encryption utility. It creates encrypted virtual disk drives instead of encrypting files. VeraCrypt supports 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption method.
At the same time, there are one or more VeraCrypt virtual drives that can be mounted which work just like real disk drives.
DiskCryptor
DiscCryptor is yet another open-source encryption software. It secures your external and internal drives, including the system partition. It is a full-disk encryptor just like BitLocker. DiscCryptor’s encryption algorithms include AES, Twofish, and Serpent.
Best Free Encryption Software – EndNote
Protect files from unauthorized access is a daunting task. Encrypting your valuable data with the right tool is an important step in protecting your data from predators. I have mentioned all the reasons to choose the best free encryption software. There are more sophisticated softwares available with paid subscriptions. Choose the one suited to your preferences.
Let me know if you use any other fbree encryption software
More security articles: