Steganos Safe is a digital vault that protects your business reports, family photos, diaries or any other sensitive files that need protection. The program creates secure disks of up to 2 TB that act as ordinary system folders when opened and become invisible once closed. File access is only possible with the right password!
Steganos Safe technology protects your files on your PC, external drives and in the cloud. Thanks to the latest 384-Bit-AES-XEX encryption facilities with AES-NI hardware acceleration, Steganos Safe provides unmatched protection at staggering speeds, no backdoors, no master key, no duplicate passwords! For extra protection, your virtual safes can even be hidden from users' eyes.
Portable Safe Tool allows you to create securely encrypted drives based on flash drives, external hard disks, DVDs or Blu-ray discs. Cloud Safe brings powerful encryption to all of your Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive accounts to protect your cloud files against unauthorized access.
Steganaos has been a guarantor of reliable protection against spyware and hackers for over 20 years. Since the founding of the company, Steganos encryption has never been broken and there are no backdoors, master passwords or duplicate keys!
However, the turning point for cryptology came with advancements in mathematics available in the 19th century, leading to the military cyphers used in World War I and the mechanical encryption machines, like Enigma, widely used in World War II.
Steganos Safe 22 is the latest release and costs $34.99 (34.84) directly from Steganos. The downloadable software has a license for use on up to 5 PCs for a year. There are no longer-term licences or bulk purchasing reductions at the point of purchase, sadly.
It has two components, the Safe creation and maintenance functionality and a file shredder for destroying documents irretrievably. Previously the Shredder was separate software technology, but with version 22, it is now integrated.
However, the core functionality is the encryption engine, and it can be used in many subtle ways to protect files and folders on the installation computer, entire partitions, network-attached folders, external hard drives, USB sticks, and even Cloud storage Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, MagentaCLOUD and Google Drive.
The scope of these possibilities goes a little way to negate the limitation that this software only works on Windows machines. Still, it would be preferable to see a mobile version for iOS and Android eventually.
The workaround that Steganos devised for small safes under 3GB was to make the Safe appear to be a standard document, like a video or audio file. The system even allows you to pick an existing MP3, M4A, AVI, WMV or EXE file and embed the safe inside it.
The working space of a safe is limited to 2TB, but the Safe size can scale from a much smaller original size dynamically. USB portable safes are size constrained by the file format used on the drive, but they work the same way in most respects as the local safes.
For those that use a computer while thinking about something else entirely, this could easily go wrong. Still, you need to launch Steganos Safe with administrator privileges to make these changes, hopefully avoiding the disastrous reflex clicker.
This feature is best configured when the PC is being initially prepared, as partition sizes can be more easily adjusted, and allocating a special partition for this purpose is relatively painless for experienced users.
The maximum password length is 20 characters, and you are encouraged to use upper, lower, special characters for maximum impact. The system will autogenerate passwords or make them up from picture selections should you want the least predictable passwords.
Our only reservation about this 2FA implementation is that instead of creating a single 2FA link for this Steganos Safe user account, it makes an entirely new one for each safe you create. Each of these links has a specific Safe name, but having so many on the Authenticator list could quickly become tiresome.
Alongside the password and 2FA options, an additional emergency password can be defined to provide a read-only entry to the encrypted Safe for others to use. Again, this is Safe specific and not a global backdoor.
The use of 384-Bit AES-XEX encryption realistically scuppers any practical brute-force hacking approach to unlocking a Safe. That leaves the only weaknesses being hacking that can display what is happening on screen or the copying of passwords to insecure locations or their appearance in documents or emails.
As an example, when a portable safe is created, the file size limitations of a FAT32 file system are explained, and along with the standard password, you are also encouraged to create an Emergency password that allows read-only access to others should they need that.
What is also good about all the solutions is that the level of security you wish to use is highly granular, enabling it to be simple for less critical data and then much stronger for genuinely sensitive files.
However, surprisingly we did find a few wrinkles in this system given the number of updates that it has seen. The wizard for creating portable partitions is entirely unaware of network drive letters and will place its virtual safe driver over them if you insist, annoyingly.
Its encryption technology is excellent using a 384-bit model, its password restrictions can be strong, and probably most importantly, it offers two-factor authentication so that even if the password can be guessed or revealed, the safe is protected.
Its biggest issue is the lack of a mobile version or support for any other OS than Windows. While Windows is still important to many, years from now, that may no longer be the case and support for Linux, and by definition, Android could become critical.
Hopefully, version 23 or 24 will come along with some of those enhancements. But even without those features, this is an effective and well-designed tool that provides precisely the functionality that many users need to protect sensitive documents.
Simply plug your important documents into the Portable Safe. The Portable Safe virtual drive works like another hard drive in your computer, with the difference that your data is stored in it securely encrypted.
Portable Safe allows you to transport data safely and securely. You can set up a Portable Safe on any USB storage device (e.g. USB flash drive, USB hard drive) or burn it to optical media such as CD or DVD.
Now please choose the desired size for the Safe. Please note that creating a Safe on slow drives or drives that are only connected via USB 2.0 can take a relatively long time and in such cases choose a size as small as viable for the Safe.
In the following step please enter the desired password for the Safe. It should be as long and complex as possible, because the security of the Safe's encryption strongly depends on how good your chosen password is. We recommend at least 20 characters and a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers as well as special characters. Ideally, you should create the most secure password possible with the password generator and keep it in a safe place or store it in Steganos Password Manager, for example.
Your Portable Safe will then be opened so that you can transfer the desired data into it. Just click "Show Portable Safe Drive" to open the Safe drive in Windows Explorer, and then copy the data you want to back up to that drive. Once everything is copied, click "Next" to close the Safe.
Please note that a Portable Safe will NOT appear in the main overview in your Steganos Data Safe. To use it, open the drive where the Portable Safe is stored and click on the usbstarter.exe there, which has the name of your Safe.
If you want to move your Portable Safe to another drive later, be sure to copy both the usbstarter.exe and its folder! The .exe only contains the program to open the Portable Safe, the actual Safe and other required components are located in the associated folder. Without this folder, you will not be able to access your Portable Safe.
Steganos Safe can be used to protect sensitive data on your PC, network, or in the cloud using 384-bit AES-XEX encryption with AES-NI-Hardware acceleration. It lets you create safe files and store all your files inside them. Each safe can have a maximum of 2TB in size. Steganos Safe supports data encryption in Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, and MagentaCLOUD. Two-factor authentication can be implemented for your Safes using Authy, Google Authenticator, etc. A safe can also be protected using USB sticks as a safe key: once ejected, the virtual vault closes and all sensitive data are protected.
- Data safes that REALLY fit everything. Holds up to 512 GB of storage that's user defined and easily adjustable with intuitive controls. Create as many encrypted data safes as needed on PCs and laptops to store photos, music, movies, documents and more. Automatic safe shut down when user logs out or when computer sleeps.
- Open your Safe your way. Allows manual access to data safes using a USB stick, PDA, memory card, digicam, or iPod; visual access to data safes using a series of pictures or opens data safes automatically with an ActiveSync enabled mobile phone with bluetooth. Once the bluetooth device is out of range, the safe closes automatically.
- E-mails in a post office safe. Safeguards user e-mails, contacts, calendars, and more. For Outlook (including contact details, calendars and work tasks), Outlook Express and Windows Mail. No e-mail access without a password. more
- 100% data delete with Steganos Shredder. Performs permanent and unrecoverable data delete operations with Steganos Shredder. Shreds data on hard drives and external storage media such as USB sticks, rewritable CDs, DVDs, and memory cards. Uses incremental shredding that's fast and doesn't abuse drives. Free Space Shredder allows user defined free space shred commands on drives. And a trash shredder reliably and completely disposes of data in trash bins.
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