Steganos Security Suite 5 review

There's a selection of other security-related programs, including the Password Manager, which is a handy utility that lets you store important passwords and PIN numbers in an encrypted form. You provide the master password that allows access to the collection. It will generate passwords too and you can choose to include different case letters, numbers and special characters as well as the character length.

The Trace Destructor wipes Windows settings that could allow other people to track your online actions. Finally, the Shredder utility wipes files, rendering them unrecoverable by most people. This integrates with the Trace Destructor, and there are two levels of data destruction - the Complete overwrite and Multiple complete overwrite, which Steganos claims meets with a US Department of Defence standard.

Steganos is emphasising its hard-disk encryption features rather than the more gimmicky steganography utility, and this version of the suite looks more polished than previous ones. The Trace Destructor feels a little out of place, and you'll have to install some form of public key-encryption package like PGP if you want to communicate securely with lots of other people, but overall this is a strong package that will increase the safety of your data, particularly on laptops and removable storage.

Author: Simon Edwards