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E4M (encryption for the masses) http://www.e4m.net/ is now merged into SecurStar in Germany that offers 256-bit filesystem encryption for Windows. Not in the US.

PGPdisk has been around for a long time.

So restricting US export will do nothing.

Users of *nix systems will probably have even more choices.

Bonus: PGP-folder-hooks in mutt

I use:

• Encryption for the masses for partition encryption
• Remote Admin for 128 bit-secure visual remote administration
• A D-Link 704 firewall/router/switch

(I assume there are 3rd party products available since before to do the other stuff you mention - I don't need them. I also have no clue what that advanced imaging stuff is .. a replacement for ACDSee?)

... and all this boils down to one thing: Microsoft uses the dominance of their operating system to push their own products above 3rd party developers. Wasn't this what the DOJ were going to stop?

Not totally transparent, since you have to "mount" the drives (actual partitions or just a virtual drive saved in a file), but E4M is a wonderful (free, OS) encryption scheme that works across all windows versions (although win98 has a shutdown bug).

Price is right, and it works fine for me. Although NTFS has a built-in encryption on its filesystem that is truly transparent, but since I can't see the code behind it, I don't trust it.

e4m - Encryption for the masses - Both windows and linux

There are (at least) three extremely good packages available for performing seamless, convenient, on-the-fly encryption of your hard drives. I can't believe they are stupid enough to not only neglect to use one, but also to propose an unreliable physical 'bomb' to destroy the drive! C'mon!

Scramdisk, E4M, and PGPDisk all create 'virtual' mounted disks on your system, which act just as any normal disk. When you boot up, you run the software, 'mount' the virtual disk (it's a large file on your hard drive), and voila. You have a fully high-strength encrypted volume to use just like you would any other disk. Very, very easy. You can even install your apps there if you want.

The data itself is encrypted on the fly, and stored on fully encrypted form on the disk. Therefore, if the volume was unmounted (say, by rebooting), the data is totally unaccessible. If you just rely on your computer to kick into password-protected 'sleep' mode, or use a password-protected screen saver, you're pretty well covered - the only way you can really get by these things is by rebooting - which unmounts the encrypted disk. Abracadabra.

Everyone in business who travels with a laptop should be using software like this. Scramdisk is, in fact, free (Win98/ME, $20 for NT/2k), and open source! I believe E4M is free, as well (not sure about the source).

Take a look:

Scramdisk
E4M
PGP

Why this stuff isn't more universally used by laptop-travelers, especially government-secret or business-secret toters, is absolutely baffling. Hell, it's even easier to use than public-key encryption.

HebGb

Put your system files in one partition --enough for the system to boot up and your data files in another one, encrypted by a strong on-the-fly encryptor (I recommend E4M as ScramDisk is stuck on Win9x).

Go through your important applications and make sure they put even less important stuff (like temporary files) into the encrypted partition --Outlook .pst files, and %tempdir% come to mind; you don't want Word leaving whole copies of your business plan on C:/temp. You'll see a slow-down, but it's worth it.

Do not store passwords for anything in non-secure media (i.e. anything short of an encrypted file on a non-networkable machine or a PDA). I use Secret! on my Palm to store passwords and PINs I don't remember.

Go active: write a little hidden app (a batch file should do even) that will 'call home'. If you lose the laptop and the thief is stupid enough to go on the Net, the machine should start giving info about its wherabouts.

I've been using E4M for NT/95/98 for a while now and recently went back to their page to check for a newer version, and I was suprised to find that they mentioned working on a linux version. I'm not sure how old that statement is, but perhaps a little encouragment could help. Plus, they have the source for the winXX versions, though they still haven't fixed the pesky win98 shutdown bug...but it was the best solution I found for winXX
check here E4M for the goods

And you're running a MICROS~1 OS, then encrypt it using E4M. Save the files directly to the encrypted "volume" and voila.

Now what I want very much to know (perhaps I should ask slashdot, ha ha) is whether you can refuse to give your encryption key up on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment. Look at it this way: Your encryption key may incriminate you. But mine is a phrase of more than five words, it's not just a meaningless jumble of letters. (The longer the better, as long as it's not easily guessable, right?)

So I've been thinking, if you had a good lawyer, you might be able to plead the fifth and get out of giving up your passphrase. Keep this one in mind at all times :)

If you're on a platform that doesn't have an encrypted filesystem, then be very careful. Swap and temp files (vim creates both) will be written to your disk and will leave their traces until they have been overwritten by something else. Encrypting files when you're not using them won't help you if there's fragments of unencrypted data lying around your hard disk.

Hmm .. is Scramdisk Linux opensource then? I use e4m since the source is available. I never use any crypto products where the source hasn't been submitted to open peer review ..

What you need is an on-the-fly encryption program (OTF). OTFs create a container file (a 'volume') that allows you to store any kind of file within it in an encrypted format. There are a buncha free (beer, speech) OTF encryptors out there: the most popular and most powerful is Scramdisk. However Scramdisk only works with Windows 9x. For NT/2k your best option, IMHO, is E4M (Encryption 4 the Masses).

Pretty good, mounts the encrypted volume as a Windows drive and uses industrial strength algorithms (I am partial to Twofish). If you go for it, also look for SecureTrayUtil, which will let you do all the E4M-related grunt work through the Windows Tray.

I am paranoid about losing my laptop with customer information myself...

Scramdisk (my personal favorite)

BestCrypt

PGP Disk

E4M

And to ease day-to-day operation: SecureTray (Windows tray utility to manage encrypted partitions).

engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.