Digital data security has been a matter of great concern since its evolution. Especially when your computers stores personal information and financial transaction details via Internet, a computer security system is critical. Passwords were the much older option that had proven to be ineffective in hands of hackers.

The reliable and effective modern technology to protect your personal data is encryption. Encrypting your information is a bit like keeping it in a locked safe. Only those who have a key or know the lock’s combination can access it. Legally, you are personally and fiscally responsible for any information disclosure from your computer or mobile devices, whether accidental or not. By protecting the entire contents of your machine and your files in general from unauthorized viewing through a strong encryption program, you can secure your computer from data disclosure even if it falls into the hands of people you don’t want knowing your personal information. 

Encryption:
Encryption is the process of transforming information in such a way that an unauthorized third party cannot read it; a trusted person can decrypt data and access it in its original form though. There are a lot of popular encryption/decryption methods, but the key to security is not a proprietary algorithm. The most important thing is keeping the encryption key (password) a secret so only trusted parties know it. In an encryption scheme, the message or information, referred to as plaintext, is encrypted using an encryption algorithm, turning it into an unreadable cipher text. This is usually done with the use of an encryption key, which specifies how the message is to be encoded. Any adversary that can see the cipher text should not be able to determine anything about the original message. An authorized party, however, is able to decode the cipher text using a decryption algorithm that usually requires a secret decryption key; those adversaries do not have access to.

How to encrypt your system
All you need is a robust, reputable data encryption program and a few minutes of free time. It won’t even cost you any money to protect all of your valuable information as many open source software’s are available online. These software’s are powerful tools for fully encrypting both individual files on your computer’s hard drive or the entire hard drive itself in a way that is secure enough so absolutely no hacker or snoop of any kind can access your data without your active permission. After downloading and installing the program from the website, you simply set up a long, extremely hard to guess password for your encryption schedule, run through some very easy to follow setup procedures and you’re good to go. From then on, you can simply create a special encryption folder and drop files, or folders of any kind into it just as if it were any other file and then encrypt them with a few clicks of the mouse. Later, when you need to access your encrypted files again, simply activate the software pick the encrypted file archive and everything is once again decrypted and visible for use.

Full hard disk encryption:
Many encryption softwares available online provide options to encrypt whole partition or drive. Thus securing your hard disks from unauthorized access. The process of encryption is simple and is almost similar to encrypting files. This software’s will normally provide option to select the source for encryption under that select ‘encrypt system partition or drive’. After selection, the process is completely similar to file encryption, the software will take you through some easy steps of processing. At the end of interaction with the software, your hard disk will be encrypted and you will have to remember the key you used to encrypt it, as with out its better to consider the data to be lost.

Portable device encryption:
If you had to carry confidential data with you on a portable device like a USB, you simply had to encrypt the files using encryption software and then copy the encrypted files on to your USB device for travelling. When you want to use the data, plug in the USB device to a computer, download and install your encryption software, making use of your encryption key decrypt it. You will have your data as such, but make sure not to lose you encryption key. At NetComplete, we do IT services better than anyone