Hide and Encrypt Your Data with Steganos Safe

This tutorial is about Steganos Safe 2008, one of the more consumer friendly data encryption engines on the market. We like the analogy of “a Safe for your data”, which is a great way of describing a secured area on your hard drive, that can only be accessed with the right combination: your password.

The company offers Steganos Safe 2008 as a free version limited to two 1GB data Safes or a commercial version with unlimited encryption capabilities. The software comes in 4 languages (English, Spanish, French, and German) and a standard installation wizard.

Once the installation has been completed, you will see several short cuts on your desktop. Click the one that says “Steganos Safe” to get to the following main menu, where we are going to set up the first virtual data safe.

This is how the application looks like right after the installation. To setup your first data safe, simply click on the safe icon bearing the little green plus sign. You are going to see the following screen:

This menu allows you to either setup a new virtual data safe (which is what we are going to be doing) or to import an existing data safe from a previous installation, data backup, or different machine. The latter is a very useful feature in case your Windows installation ever crashes or your hard drive fails. As long as you can recover the secure data safe, you can simply import it on a different machine and still have access to your data.

Please click Next to get to the following screen:

Now, you can define the name of your encrypted data safe. Using descriptive names will help you categorize your data and makes for a more organized file management. You can also choose the drive letter that will be assigned to your safe when mounted into Windows. That way you can access your encrypted area as if it was a regular hard drive. Once you are done, click Next.

As this screen explains, you can now define the size of your safe. Make a rough estimate of how much space you need for the files you are planning to store inside your safe. No worries, though, if you run out of space the size can still be changed later on.

You have three options on how to set your password. Use your own password, let the software generate one for you by clicking the right icon next to the password field, or use Steganos PicPass by clicking the other icon.

PicPass lets you define a sequence of images as your access code which is great if you are not good at remembering your passwords and are not using a password manager. In addition, the software shows you how secure your password is and warns you if there is a chance that your password might be easily guessed.

A very nice feature of Steganos Safe 2008 is the “Store your password on key device” feature. A key device could be your USB stick, Blackberry, PocketPC, etc. Once your password is on the key device, you can use it as your digital key to your safe, meaning that anytime you connect your key device, your safe will open and anytime you disconnect it, your safe will close, automatically locking up your data.

Once the setup process has finished, the safe will open and show you this little window:

Here you can determine whether or not the safe should be displayed as a regular hard drive in your Computer. If you choose “No” your data will be hidden and you will only be able to access your data through the application itself. By choosing “Yes”, the software will mount your safe just like a regular hard drive within Windows, as shown in the following screenshot:

Once you close your Safe from within the application or by removing your key device, this hard drive will not just be inaccessible, it will actually disappear from your computer, securely locking away your data and hiding it from people who might be looking for it!

Repeating the above process will allow you to categorize and manage your data and information by creating different safes for different categories. This is also a great feature for computers with multiple users. For this example, we’ve set up two more safes called Sales and Photos. Notice that these two are currently closed and thus don’t show up anywhere other than the software. Here is how our main window looks like after creating two more safes:

Once you have finished creating all the safes you need, you can configure and customize each in color, size, or location. Simply click on the corresponding icon on the right bearing the settings symbol. One of the features we would like to highlight here is the Actions tab:

This setting allows you to define any application to be launched automatically right after your safe has opened. So, if you are using Steganos Safe to store your Outlook file (see Mailbox encryption), you can tell the software to automaticallly launch your Outlook after opening your safe. This is a very convenient feature for everybody using the safe on a daily basis.

The final feature we would like to have a look at is Steganos Portable Safe. This tool allows you to create encrypted areas on your portable media such as USB sticks, CDs, DVDs, memory cards, and even iPods. You can start Steganos Portable Safe by clicking on the link on your desktop. After a short introduction to the subject, you’ll see the following window:

The process to set up a Portable Safe is similar to what we’ve seen earlier. Simply choose where you want to store your portable Safe and follow the instructions. The company calls this Portable Safe, as you can transport it and launch it on any other Windows-based computer without the need to install the actual application. For the first time you run it, however, you need administrative rights on the host machine to install the live encryption engine, the service that handles the encrypted files.

The software is available at many retail sites throughout the US or by downloading it directly from the company’s website: http://www.steganos.com

If you have any questions regarding this tutorial, please leave a comment and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.