During my search for an easy to use encryption package for my Laptop computer, I recently came across Steganos Security Suite 2006.  Although this software package is designed for the Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems, without current support for the Pocket PC platform, I felt this would still make for an interesting and informative review.

Steganos, a leading German company for consumer encryption software, were more than happy to assist with this review.

When we hear large companies and government agencies discussing data encryption, we tend to think of large and expensive programs that perform lots of number crunching to encrypt and protect highly sensitive data such as confidential plans, sensitive documents, video surveillance and the like.  So the question arises - "Why should I bother to encrypt my personal data?  I am using Windows XP Professional, with the latest security patches, and all my documents are only accessible through my user account - so why encrypt?"

The answer is fairly straight forward and surprisingly simple.  Your personal data such as email correspondence, family photo's, family budgets, electronic receipts, bank account details and more are of interest to those seeking to steal identities, bank account details, passwords, software Licence keys and the list goes on.  This huge store of information will give the interested person almost intimate knowledge of who you are, better equipping them to steal what they can.  Besides this, you may also have confidential files on your computer left over from the last few months reports you needed to produce for work, which, in the wrong hands, could damage the company.

I have outlined quickly a small part of the information that an interested person would like to obtain, but what about the standard security associated with Windows XP Professional?  As an administrator managing my home network, and assisting with other networks, there are tools readily available that can reset the machine's administrator password in under 30 seconds.  Knowing this, your data is wide open for anyone who wants to obtain it.

Steganos Security Suite 2006

Let's have a look at what Steganos Security Suite can offer:

• Steganos Safe
• Steganos Portable Safe
• Steganos Private Favourites
• Steganos Password Manager
• Steganos E-Mail Encryption
• Steganos File Manager
• Steganos AntiTheft
• Steganos Internet Trace Destructor
• Steganos Shredder

Steganos Security Suite 2006 has a main application launch window that allows access to the programs listed above.  I will explain each program separately below and discuss the benefits of each.

Steganos Safe

Steganos Safe is an application that creates and manages encrypted volumes on your hard disk drive.  Steganos Safe can create encrypted volumes any size up to 64GB.  These encrypted volumes appear as another hard drive in Windows Explorer when open, and can be used as such.  The data placed inside the safe is stored in an encrypted format using 256 bit AES encryption.  When the safe is open, the Steganos Live Encryption Engine encrypts and decrypts data on the fly as it is required.  This method means no real delays are experienced when opening and closing the safes, plus the efficiency of the Steganos Live Encryption Engine ensures the computer operates as normal with no delay added for this extra security.

Safes are ideal for storing large amounts of data, such as the files normally stored in the "My Documents" folder, pictures, music, video's etc...

Safes are opened using a password which can also be stored on a USB memory stick, digital camera or any Pocket PC / Smart phone using Microsoft ActiveSync.  The safes can be automatically opened and closed when the external device is connected or disconnected.  This helps secure your data when you leave your computer, for example while taking a lunch break.  All that is needed is that the external device (USB memory stick, phone etc...) is taken with you.

Steganos Portable Safe

The Portable Safe operates in a similar way to the Steganos Safe, except it is stored on removable media such as CD's, DVD's, USB memory sticks, SD Cards and external hard drives.  The main difference being that the Steganos Live Encryption Engine software files are also stored on the media.  This enables the Live Encryption Engine to be installed on any Windows 2000 or Windows XP machine so that the Portable Safe can be opened.  To install this software, administrator privileges are required on the local machine.

Portable Safes are an ideal way to securely send data to a work colleague or family member.  I have a 1 GB USB memory stick and a 40 GB laptop hard drive (configured as an external USB hard drive) which I have turned into Portable Safes.  I will explain how I use my 40 GB external hard drive toward the end of this review.

Steganos Private Favourites

Private Favourites create an encrypted list of your favourite internet sites which is accessible in Internet Explorer.

Storing your favourites in this way prevents prying eyes from looking at the sites you like to visit.  This is great for securing access to on line banking, corporate login pages and any other site you don't want others to know about!

At the time of writing, Mozilla Firefox is not currently compatible with the Private Favourites program.

Steganos Password Manager

Steganos Password Manager is a secure method to store all your passwords from on line banking, web site logins, software keys and passwords to safes and portable safes.  Password Manager automatically stores your passwords when you enter them into an application or web site, and can automatically enter them in for you if the Password Manager is open.

It records details of the window or site used to enter your passwords, and when this window or site is opened again, Password Manager recognizes this window and populates the required fields automatically.

At the time of writing, only Internet Explorer is compatible with Password Manager for storing and auto-completion of site log in.  I would like to see support for Mozilla Firefox as this is my preferred browser.

Steganos E-Mail Encryption

Steganos E-Mail Encryption is an application that allows for the entry of plain text and attachment of files to be encrypted and sent via email.  The application has a text entry box where the email message is typed, and an attachment box where files are added.  When the message has been written and necessary files attached, Steganos E-Mail Encryption creates an encrypted self extracting cab file that is opened with the password that you specify.

Clicking on the "Send Encrypted" button opens up Outlook and creates a new message with the cab file as an attachment.  An automatically generated message is inserted into the body of the email detailing how to decrypt the original email.

E-Mail Encryption can also create exe files, but these tend to be blocked by email clients, so it is best to stay with the cab files instead.

Steganos File Manager

Steganos File Manager is used to encrypt or decrypt single files at a time.  The same level of encryption is used as with the other applications, but the File Manager allows one more level of security which is amazing.  There is an option to encrypt files, and also to hide the encrypted files inside a carrier file such as a picture or sound file.  This is what is called Steganography, and where Steganos derive their company name.  The  extracts below are from taken from the Wikipedia web site.

"Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one apart from the intended recipient knows of the existence of the message; this is in contrast to cryptography, where the existence of the message itself is not disguised, but the content is obscured."

"The advantage of steganography over cryptography alone is that messages do not attract attention to themselves, to messengers, or to recipients. An unhidden coded message, no matter how unbreakable it is, will arouse suspicion and may in itself be incriminating, as in some countries encryption is illegal."

All of the programs mentioned above use Cryptography where the encrypted file is not hidden, but at the time of writing and with a strong password cannot be cracked.  If you want to send sensitive information to a work colleague or family member and do not want to attract any attention, then hiding your encrypted message inside a picture or audio file is the most secure way of transmission across the internet.  Also, hiding your sensitive documents in some photo's of no importance not only keeps then secure, but other interested persons who have gained access to your system will not even know they are there.

Here is an example of Steganography.  The picture of the O2 XDA Atom is encrypted and hidden inside the picture of the Warrumbungle National Park taken from the Siding Springs Observatory near Coonabarrabran in Central New South Wales - Australia.

Encrypted File

Carrier File (Changed to prevent algorithm being cracked)

Steganos AntiTheft

Steganos AntiTheft is a very neat program that will help authorities track down and locate your stolen Laptop or Desktop computer.  With all your personal data encrypted, your only concern is getting back your hardware!

This application silently sends the computers internet IP address to a secure sever managed by Steganos.  Every time your computer starts up, the IP address is recorded.  You will have access to the server and can see when the computer is used and the IP address associated with this use.  All that is needed to help recover your computer is to give the local authorities a print out of the dates and IP addresses your computer registered since you reported it missing.  It doesn't matter if the person paying for internet access has a fixed IP or not, so long as you have the date, time and IP address, authorities can track that assigned address to a customer and residential address, and have a much better chance at recovering your stolen computer.

This is definitely one handy program to have loaded and it certainly gives me better peace of mind if the worst should happen.

Steganos Internet Trace Destructor

Steganos Internet Trace Destructor is a good program to hide your internet activities from others.  It prevents a other internet sites from determining where you came from and what information you were looking at.  This helps prevent information being collected on you.

It also destroys all traces in your web browser, which is helpful when your computer is shared with other people.  Sometimes content not suitable for younger persons is stored on your computer from annoying pop up windows and from browser hijack attempts.  Steganos Internet Trace Destructor can recognize harmful content and destroy it either during an internet session or when you exit the browser.

It can also disable sending logged error reports with Windows because we do not know what part of the documents we are working on will be sent to Microsoft when a program crashes.  It may be that we were working on a very sensitive report that could damage the company if marketing specialists got their hands on it.

Other features include the removing of document and program histories in the Windows start menu and other office programs.

Steganos Shredder

Steganos Shredder is a powerful application to reliably destroy any data you do not wish to have traces of on your hard drive.  From my understanding, which could be totally incorrect, when a file is deleted from the Recycle Bin the reference to that file in the hard drive's File Allocation Table is deleted, but the file still exists on the hard drive.  The space taken up by this deleted file is considered free space by the operating system.  There are a few tools available on the internet to recover these deleted files and they work by inspecting the hard drive and piecing the files back together.  If the area on the disk has not had any data written over it, then the deleted document can be recovered.

This is of particular concern to us especially when we sell our old computer or upgrade to a new hard drive and give away the old one.  Files on the drive can be recovered, even after the drive has been formatted!  This is where Steganos Shredder comes into action.  Do destroy a document or ensure a drive is wiped clean, Steganos Shredder deleted the files and writes over those parts on the disk to ensure no trace of the document exists.  After formatting a hard drive when we are ready to sell our old computer Steganos Shredder can be used to ensure the disk has been overwritten to completely remove any traces of our data and files.

Steganos Shredder uses three levels of overwriting: Complete Overwrite (fast), Multiple Overwriting - US Department of Defense Standard (time consuming), and the Gutmann Method (extremely time consuming).

How I use Steganos Security Suite 2006

With the idea of data encryption and data security, I thought it would be a good idea to show how I use this excellent security suite to show how easy it is to keep data secure.  My Laptop has a 100 GB hard drive that is partitioned into a 20 GB disk for the Windows XP Professional operating system, and the remainder for file and data storage.  I have an old 40 GB Laptop hard drive which I have converted into an external USB hard drive.  I also have a 1 GB USB memory stick and just recently purchased the cheapest 128 MB USB memory stick I could find for storing passwords on.

On my hard drive I have created a 40 GB Steganos Safe which I use to store every file I work with.  I no longer use the "My Documents" folder with my Windows XP user account.  Instead, I have created all relevant folders in the Steganos Safe which I called "Documents", and have created shortcuts on my desktop to these folders for quick navigation.  The data I have stored there includes all documents for home and work, my entire music and Pocket PC DVD collection, all the Computer and Pocket PC software installation files I have including licence keys and the list goes on.  I used to store my installation files on DVD's and CD's, but due to a scratched disk, I lost many programs.  This is why I store them on my hard drive.  I have also moved my Outlook data file to the Steganos Safe so that all my email correspondence is totally secure.  I have also set the 128 MB USB memory stick to automatically open the Steganos Safe and also open up Outlook when my computer starts up.

On the 40 GB external hard drive I created a Steganos Portable Safe that is 40 GB in size.  I use this external hard drive to back up all the data I have stored in the Steganos Safe "Documents" using a terrific freeware / shareware program called Allway Sync.  I have set up this program to synchronize all the data I have in my Steganos Safe with my Steganos Portable Safe located on the external hard drive.  With this set-up, I have a back up copy of everything I have on my laptop in a secure and encrypted format.  If I need access to a file, or series of files, I can just connect my external drive to any computer for quick access instead of going to the trouble of starting my Laptop.  A screen shot of Allway Sync is below.  I was using the free version quite successfully for a while until I exceeded the maximum number of files it could synchronise.  I then purchased the full version as this is one very handy piece of software that makes backing up data so very easy.

Conclusion

I have suggested to Steganos that it would be a neat addition to their security suite to create a version for the Pocket PC - that works in a similar way.  I have also suggested it could be a good idea to create a multilevel access method to encrypted files on the Steganos Portable Safe - allowing for read only permissions thus ensuring highly sensitive data remain on the Steganos Portable Safe in an encrypted form and to disallow the copying of sensitive documents to another computer's hard drive where it may be stored unencrypted.

Steganos Security Suite 2006 is definitely an application suite that I consider to be as important as a good antivirus package - of which I strongly recommend Nod32.  Steganos Security Suite 2006 is easy to use and by changing the way we work with our files and documents we can rest assured that our personal and company data will never get into the wrong hands!  At the time of writing Steganos Security Suite 2006 sells for $69 USD and is worth every cent.  The costs of personal or company data finding its way into the wrong hands could be incredibly high.  Check out the Steganos Website for more details and for purchasing information.

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