Encrypt The Planet
Privacy First
Once you install the software, Steganos will walk you thourough creating an encrypted virtual drive (or multiple encrypted drives) on your system, which will be used as an isolated vault to keep all you data secure. The vaults use the powerful 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm. Depending on your operating system, the software will decide the maximum available hard drive space for creating the virtual drive, though you can also specify the size of the virtual drive. The software supports up to 512GB of size, however, it is dependent on the space available on your hard drive. The vaults can be opened or closed or specify that all safes are closed when the screensaver activates or the computer switches to standby mode. Also included is a mail-client safe that protects calendars, tasks, contacts, and e-mail on Windows Mail, Outlook, and Outlook Express.
After creating the virtual drive a password needs to be provided. The program can generate a password on its own. Interestingly, you can also use an image file, or a series of images as your password. This is an excellent idea to thwart keyloggers or good for those who want a strong password without having to remember those long passwords. After creation the drive it will appear on your safe menu screen.
The Steganos Privacy Suite bundles 9 utilities into this suite of software for enhancing system security. The Crypt & Hide will encrypt the chosen file and hide it within another chosen file, known as steganography. Email encryption will encrypt a mail and send it safely to the recipient. "One click destruction" will delete all the history files including your internet history with just a click.
Similar attention to detail can be seen in many of the program's other utilities. Shredder, for instance, can do any of the following: provide a quick, complete overwrite of data to destroy it; employ the standard used by the U.S. Department of Defense, overwriting everything three times (once with 0s, once with 1s, and once with random characters); or implement the Gutmann Method, which involves changing filenames, removing file attributes and unused memory space around the file, and 35-step overwriting. That may sound like the computer equivalent of a tactical nuke, but if you want to prevent a file's recovery, it hardly gets more certain than that.
While many utility packages can remove temporary files, lists of recently used documents, cookies, and offline Web pages, the Internet Trace Destructor utility removes select records maintained by more than 50 different programs, including Microsoft Office, Netscape, RealPlayer, and WinZip. You can specify any of seven history-file styles maintained in Internet Explorer, including cookies, auto-completion records, passwords, and the home-page protector. Once you've customized Internet Trace Destructor, your choices are stored for future use.
You are not limited to creating secure encrypted vaults on just your hard drives. You can calso create secure vaults on CDs, or even encrypt your USB drives.
Privacy Suite's excellent help system is context-sensitive when launched from any utility. It doesn't assume the user is a security veteran, but it also doesn't condescend in providing information. Steganos Security Suite shouldn't be your first line of defense, but if you have those already covered, this app delivers the goods on a variety of other fronts.
And when it is all said and done, all your data will be secure. All your secure drives will be visible from one centralized location.
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