Steganos Security Suite 5 review

Steganos' latest version of its home encryption software allows you to encrypt files and email messages, destroy data securely and wipe clean files from your PC that could help others track your usage. It's a comprehensive suite containing some useful utilities that, while not all integrating fully, should appeal to those who want to lock down their PC.

The feature that most people will use is the Steganos Safe. This creates virtual drives that you can access as any normal hard disk. You may run four safes at any one time, and each can be up to 1.2GB in size. The safe is actually an encrypted file that's mounted like a file system. You're able to choose which drive letters to associate with each safe or let the software decide on an ad hoc basis.

When you create a safe, you supply a password and the software indicates how secure it is as you type it. Trouble is, it bases this estimate on the number of characters used, not the actual combination of characters. Short passwords 'cannot be cracked without specialized software', while longer ones 'cannot be cracked by the secret services'. This is a rather optimistic view.

Naturally, an attacker will use specialised software every time and even the most basic of password crackers can use dictionary attacks. I wouldn't want to bet on the abilities of the secret services either. Stick to the standard advice of keeping passwords over seven characters long, include numbers and special characters such as '~' and '/', and you'll be fine.

Data is encrypted using the modern standard encryption algorithm AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). It's encrypted as it's copied to the drive, which Steganos claims reduces the chances of corruption if the system were to crash.

There's also the Portable Safe facility, which allows you to create encrypted archives that can be exported, for example to CD. Handily, opening an archive doesn't require an installation of the Steganos Security Suite - you simply need the the password. This makes creating portable encrypted archives less hassle than messing around with PGP's PGPDisk, which requires a compatible version of the commercial PGP software on each PC to access the files. It's simple to use too: the setup Wizard will split the archive into chunks appropriate to the optical drive you have, for example1.2GB for a DVD, and you may choose your own size if required.

Email-encryption facilities are available, but aren't integrated into any email client. You need to enter text into Steganos' own editor and attach files, which are then encrypted into an executable file. You can then attach this to an email message in your favourite client. This approach means the recipient doesn't require any special software to retrieve the contents - just the password. There's also an option to save this file as a CAB. This will be used by those who have email systems with anti-virus features that don't let EXE files through. The encryption is symmetric, rather than using public keys, which limits its usefulness to people who can transmit the passwords securely between themselves.

Public key encryption and signing has been a long-standing omission from Steganos' range. For regular, secure mail exchanging with others, including people you don't know well, public key options such as the commercial PGP and free GnuPG are both available and provide good security.

The final big tool in this suite is the File Manager. This allows you to secretly encapsulate files within another, innocuous-looking file - the area where Steganos first made its name. The steganographic element allows you to hide messages inside WAV audio files or bitmap images. The respected Blowfish encryption algorithm is used to encrypt the hidden data.