Evening Straight to the point today.. Im looking for away i can password protect / encrypt folders on my windows 7 machine. There is a few programs out there, but do any of you guys have any recommendations / suggestions i can protect important paper work digitally on my home server? Thanks Chris
There is built in EFS. It's not bulletproof, but it will keep out other standard users on the machine just fine if you just want some private space and assure that your things aren't arbitrarily deleted by others. As long as you encrypt it under your own account it would keep other users out of it. Just right click choose properties, advanced, then encrypt contents. If something more secure is truly needed, I would suggest self encrypting drive. I feel they are a good balance of security and useability without having to fool around with software. Though, with the flashdrive types I suppose physical loss could be a real potential problem for some.
Depending if your just looking to stop others who have access to the device from snooping (i.e. family etc) then setting up folder permissions should be a good first step. Then as above using the built in encryption in Windows 7 (EFS) is an option. Be careful with EFS as I've had a few people use it in the past thinking everything is fine to have there HDD / PC curl up and die - leaving them without the encryption key to decrypt as its all done transparently to the computer user - rather than the more traditional method of requiring a password to be entered to access it Also you say your using them on your home server, is your home server running Windows 7?
Thanks for your responses. yes im using windows 7. I had a look into folder permissions and this might do the trick locally. If someone unknown (i.e. big bad hacker man) was to gain access, would the folder permissions still prevent him deleting or copying the folders. the 7zip password protection could prevent the files been opened. What about if i were to access the contents externally?
