14 DAY TRIAL // Secure Folder has been designed with the purpose to keep your files safe from prying eyes. It locks your data using 256-bit AES Rijndael algorithm and can also hide the items from view.
Keeping information safe these days is not quite easy to achieve, despite the plethora of apps promising strong protection. In many case easy workarounds can open the door to your data. There are few programs that can indeed withstand cunning attacks.
But sometimes the easies solutions are the best. Secure Folder is a nifty little freebie geared up with plenty of protective features for your files. Besides encrypting your data it can also hide it from view. Moreover, you can use it to map a folder to a drive for easier access to that location; its functionality also includes a secure deletion component and a system cleaner.
The application comes both as a desktop installation as well as a portable download. If you go with the second there is no need to install, just unzip the contents and use.
Regardless how you decide to bring the program on your system you’ll face one of the simplest interfaces. All the options are condensed in the upper part of the window and most of the space is reserved for the folders you add and want to protect.
Secure Folder is protected by a countersign (“password”) from the very first moment you launch it. You are advised to change it for better protection, as this is the only key that can remove the security measures you enforce upon your data.
Support for drag and drop makes it easy to load up the directories you want to protect. A set of three options is at your disposal: lock the item, hide it or encrypt it. Of course, you can choose all of them to ensure maximum protection.
However, if locking and encrypting the folder work like a charm, hiding it does not really throw the invisibility cloak on them. We were able to bring it to surface by simply instructing Windows Explorer to display protected operating system files. Also, we noticed that the hiding occurs regardless of the security measure you impose in the software.
On the other hand locking and encrypting really did the job. The folder affected by these security measures showed zero size and we could not breach them.
An important aspect is that you always know which folders are protected and the protection measures enforced just by simply taking a gander at the main application window. Right near the secured folder you will see the protection modes currently on keeping it safe: “L” stands for Lock,” H” stands for Hide and “E” stands for Encrypt.
Toggling the protection on or off for multiple locations at once is no complicated job. Suffice to check them and press “Insecure” button and they’ll become unshielded.
Among the multiple abilities of Secure Folder we found that it can hide an entire drive from view. However, these become invisible only because there is no icon available in Windows Explorer. Use a different file manager or simply type in the location of a specific file on that drive in Explorer’s address bar and you will gain instant access to it.
“Virtual Drive” component in Secure Folder helps you map a folder as a drive. This feature is useful for deeply buried locations you use frequently as it offers quicker access. You choose the letter and mounting and unmounting is a cinch.
System Cleaner component is in tone with the rest of the program and does not bring any complicated options. It shows a list of files it can purge and as soon as you give the command the folders holding that unnecessary data are purged. The elements you can sweep in a click include Windows temporary files, data in Recycle Bin, Run history and event log.
Despite having such a small interface Secure Folder is packed with modules. A plus in functionality is given by the Secure Delete module, which should make sure that the data it wipes cannot be recovered. However, we managed to retrieve wiped items quite easily, despite the 7 pass overwrite. Upping the overwrite number to the max still allowed us to recover the files, but the level of corruption was pretty high, though.
Support for drag and drop for loading the folders you want to protect as well as those you want to wipe makes working with the application very comfortable. System Cleaner covers only a small amount of locations, the file wiper is not thorough enough, not even with the maximum number of overwrite passes. The good news is that serves its original purpose and manages to keep your directories safe from prying eyes.
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