Best way to secure files?

Hi,

Well, the only other thing I could recommend is using a DVD-RW to make changes to files quickly/easily.  And then locking the dvd in a safe or something.  OR you could check out a file storage service like Xdrive.  Always wanted to try it, but never got a chance, they offer a trial period.  This way, the theives would need your account credentials to access the files.  An added bonus is that you can access the files anywhere that you are AND the files are backed up :)

http://www.xdrive.com

Cheers,

Cyan990

Hi:

Thanks for the suggestion. The DVD-RW solution would be just as much of a pain as the portable hard drive is, at least to me it would.

The xdrive solution is neat, however I don't want my files on someone else's server either. I want to keep it local.

Ever thought of disk / file encryption?

Checkout Axcrypt @ http://axcrypt.sourceforge.net/ ,that might be a good start. It uses the AES encryption standard so that should be sufficient enough. Don't forget, ecnrypting the files does not replace a back-up! You can back-up your files in encrypted state so you that's not a concern. A HDD can be faulty and you don't want all your data gone I suppose.

If you have some budget check-out safeboot disk encryption @ www.safeboot.com not cheap though.

Hope this helped.

Hi,

If I might make an observation.  I would think the data would be safer in an off-site repository under encryption rather than locally due to the fact it is secured and backed up.

Just trying to make sure your data is safe :)

Hope you find a good solution,

Cyan990

Try a multitude of precautions. Encrypt the files, assign passwords to the files themselves for instance assign a password to your Word docs. Put your Word docs in compressed files which has a different password assigned to it. Rename the extension of the compressed file, eg. *.zip to something like *.sys. Put these files in a folder where only your account has access to it (can be done by assigning specific rights to that folder). There's some other steps you could try as well, and I know it sounds like a lot of trouble to go through, but you can never be too safe.

The best method is to not have any file accessible on your computer at all.  That way if your computer is stollen, who cares.  Put you files into an FTP site that way they are protected by a companies security, backed up, and encrypted.  Your time to transport you drive is worth something.  This particular site charges $5 per month and gives us "crazy" web storage

http://www.siteground.com//index.htm?referrerid=11009&OVRAW=free%20ftp%20site&OVKEY=ftp%20site%20hosting&OVMTC=advanced

Title: Best way to secure files?

Sneakernet - make them unavailable to anyone online
Sneakernet - make them unavailable to anyone who can access your machine

[offload to removable media, such as diskette, but a one-time write CDROM is a bit better]

The truth is! there is no perfect science to backup your files other than what you already doing.  The most secure servers are still breakable by a disk inserted into you computer to hack the administrator password.
Rename the adminsitrator username to something else.  Create an excellent password with numbers, characters, and symbols and should be 8 characters or more.  Offsite storage whether it be a secure website or removable media like the usb drive that your already using, cd rom, or whatever.  
Most people dont have the technical savy, dont care, or wont do anything with it if they were that lucky.  I mean the Department of Defense has been hacked at one point.  So all you can do is find the simplest, cost effective, effecient method of securing your data which I mentioned above.  

Encrypt then put on some sort of media. Even if the media got stolen, they'd still have to try to decrypt it. Public key encryption's going to be your best bet in terms of doing that anyway.

You may scan sensitive things, but what value would you TRULY assign to them? Can you justify the cost of whatever form of protection you're going for? But besides that, nothing will necessarily imply that it's the easiest to use.


Another product you could look at is PGP Whole Disk.
http://www.pgp.com/products/wholediskencryption/pgp_whole_disk_professionals.html

a handy tool here: http://www.softsland.com/Cryptgine_Windows_Plugin.html

One thing to remember is that encryption takes CPU cycles and every bit of encryption takes time to implement. Just use stenography to hide your p0rn in non-naughty pictures. there are commerical programs that will do this for you. Less overhead and you've accomplished the same thing as your original goal...

All kidding aside you could also look at BestCrypt. They also make a great secure delete utility called BCWipe.

I suggest multiple levels of encryption for added security. Just because you can encrypt a full volume doesn't mean you coluldn't add an encrypted directory on top of the encrypted volume. You can go one step further and install a database that provides encryption withing the database so you have encrypted database data residing on an encrypted volume stored on an encrypted disk. This is a bit over-the-top but shows encryption in depth in action.

One thing seems to be lost: truecrypt is Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows XP/2000/2003  and Linux

And if you like you can create an encrypted partition, keep a 2nd secret volume (opend after entering another password) put there a filebased disk volume keep in it another ... But hey we are taking about AES here, so it should be enough with one level of encryption.

Tolomir

TrueCrypt also get's my vote, you should probably get a USB memory stick, they can hold GIG's of data and truecrypt is very fast with today's hardware, even that much data can be secured quite quickly.
FireWire memory stick's are faster still. Firewire is faster than usb because it has it's own processors that take the load off the main CPU. Firewire HD is also recommended.
-rich

So simple it is almost painful to answer...

Put a password on the BIOS. Then pray
that you NEVER forget it! This way, you
could not even boot off a CD to access
the system, foe example: with a WinPE
disc.

To reset a BIOS password of a PC, keeps you 2 minutes busy if you have physical access to the computer. One could even steal just the harddisk.

Tolomir

 

There is no perfect answer to this question, I mean if we are thinking of all the possibilities if someone had physical access to your HD all they would need to do is ghost the image to their computer. All you can do is encrypt all the files that are dear to you and put as many passwords you can between your information and the theif. It may not stop them but it could slow them down enough that they wouldn't want to do it.

There's also the option of compressing your sensitive data in a rar, assigning a password and encrypting the filenames. A lengthy option, but effective.

One could of cause simple use truecrypt.

As I suggested here: {http:#16163372}

This is not just word, this is a piece of fine working software even for free with full AES encryption.

Tolomir

TrueCrypt, again would be an easy, simple, secure solution.
{<a rel="nofollow" href="http:#16180102">http:<wbr>#16180102<wbr></a>}
-rich

true crypt is a great solution: one problem if you ever loose you password the data is certainly irretrievalble.  Truecrypt will provide a solution or use the methods I've described above

Thanks for everyone's feedback on this. I'm going to try TrueCrypt this weekend and see how it works out. I read the documentation and it looks pretty straight forward. I'll post back. Thanks.

I checked out TrueCrypt and I like it alot. Thanks.