9 Ways to Encrypt Your Files in Under 60s
Makeshift Hardware Wallet / Air Gaped System:
My Vid on KeePass:
In my last video I demonstrated a cold storage air gaped system using encryption that can act as a hardware wallet, and stay tuned for a video on how to properly backup files, but right now I thought I would quickly cover various ways to encrypt your data.
VeraCrypt allows you to encrypt a set of files in an encrypted file container or an entire storage device. This is more or less the holy grail of securing your data.
PGP/GPG allows you to encrypt and sign text or files. This is also really secure, though it’s ideal for sharing text and files rather than storing them on your hard drive.
Office suites like LibreOffice allow you to encrypt individual files. LibreOffice uses Blowfish 128 bit, which is not as secure as other services, but I’ll touch on that in a moment.
KeePass and similar password managers allow you to encrypt your password databases. It’s perfect for protecting passwords, but otherwise it won’t help you in other areas.
7zip and similar software allows you to encrypt compressed file folders. This is perfectly suitable for archiving data, but can get a bit clunky if you access this regularly.
Using Bitlocker on Windows, LVM on Linux, or FileVault on Mac you can encrypt your computer’s hard drive. This is perfect for securiting a device against physical theft, but you may need to reinstall the operating system to implement this and you have to pay for Bitlocker on Windows.
Some cloud storage services and antivirus software have ‘vault’ services, which resemble encrypted folders. I would prefer to rely on VeraCrypt over antivirus/cloud storage, but these services are definitely still an option.
Most crypto wallets will encrypt your wallet file. Similar to KeePass, this is perfect for crypto, but won’t help you in other areas.
And finally ciphers such as PlayFair allow you to encrypt raw text. These ciphers are probably the least secure in this list, but this is still an option here.
If somebody were to physically steal your device anything that is not encrypted can be accessed by them, regardless of if you have a password on your device or not. Additionally, anybody accessing your cloud storage account, including employees, would be able to open any file that is not encrypted. Therefore, if you have important files consider encrypting them. Now, this list is not geared towards those hiding data from a criminal investigation and the like. This is instead more focused on protecting files from the run-of-the-mill thief who steals physical hard drives or data from cloud storage. In a case such as this, even the more minimal encryption options will protect you from such an attack.
*All graphics are public domain or open source and used within their license terms.
*Credit to Admiral Bob for Isolation Blues (the awesome background music). License: Creative Commons Attribution (3.0)
*The KeePass & GPG logos are licensed GPL, my commentary on this video is licensed Creative Commons Attribution
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