Password-protection or encryption on USB sticks

km1500

office encryption (eg word or excel docx or xlsx) is strong and only breakable by brute force attack ie to all intents and purposes unbreakable providing you use a strong password

However the weakness is the temporary files that it creates whilst editing the document

this is a light hearted short video on encrypting usb drives

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xf_hRTzSnvU

For me, the best way would be to get a cheap pro key by googling it and upgrade your windows to Pro and then use bitlocker to lock your usb drives (and all the backups you have of it) with a password

TMSG

I second @fenlander_uk's suggestion to go with VeraCrypt. This is as safe as it gets, provided a sensible password is used. The app is GUI-based so not that hard to use and as mentioned you can create one or more containers of whatever size is required. If your files are say ~80MB create a 150MB container etc. The container can be copied/backup'd to other devices.

However, as as matter of course I would ALWAYS download software from the creator's website and not from third parties: VeraCrypt downloads

Another possibility, very good if this is for backup purposes only, is to use 7-Zip to create an encrypted archive. Again, if the password is sensible this is as safe as VeraCrypt.

Vitor

PRAISETHESUN said:

Vitor said:

If you're using Office to keep the data in Word, Excel etc. open the document, go to File > Info > Protect Document > Encrypt with Password, and set the password on each document.

Office "encryption" should be used at best just to restrict accidental editing, not as an actual security solution. Much better to use bitlocker or veracrypt as discussed above.

You're thinking of the early days of Office encryption which could be cracked quite easily, now uses AES-256 encryption; plus we're talking about a device with layers of protection such as being kept in a house.