ANTenna Blog -- Hardware & Software

Every small business needs good desktop encryption software. The latest version of my favorite product, TrueCrypt, makes it a better choice than ever.

TrueCrypt is an open-source desktop encryption product that is free, easy to use, extremely powerful and packed with useful features. Check out bMighty's step-by-step guide to setting up and using TrueCrypt to get a better idea of just what this exceptional tool can do to protect your most important business data.

This week, the TrueCrypt development team released a major new update. TrueCrypt 6.3 adds full support for Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It also allows Windows users to create "system volume favorites," making it easier to auto-mount encrypted volumes that run important system applications or that include network-share folders.

Two other updates released earlier this year focused mostly on bug fixes and performance enhancements. The latter are especially interesting; although I have always found TrueCrypt to be exceptionally fast and responsive, it continues to close any remaining performance gaps.

Encrypting sensitive data, especially on laptops, is just common sense. In a growing number of jurisdictions, it is also the law. There is no good reason to carry around unsecured, sensitive business data on a laptop computer, especially when a product like TrueCrypt makes encryption so easy at such a low cost.