YOU’LL NEED THIS
VERACRYPT
https://veracrypt.fr, available for Windows, macOS and Linux
IT’S HARD TO GET ENCRYPTION RIGHT. Criminals using the supposedly end-to-end encrypted app Encrochat discovered this the hard way in 2020 when law enforcement was given permission to infect the service’s servers with malware, allowing messages to be read.
VeraCrypt seeks to solve the problem of how to encrypt data at risk. It was originally developed in 2013 as a fork of the discontinued ‘Truecrypt’ project. Since then, it has made considerable improvements on Truecrypt’s original labyrinthine and occasionally buggy code.
For Windows users, the software can encrypt your OS and external disks. It can also be used to create encrypted ‘volumes’—ordinary files that can be placed on your device. When mounted as a virtual disk, VeraCrypt functions as an encrypted container for your private data.
VeraCrypt is open-source and also available for macOS and Linux, though there’s no option to encrypt your OS for non-Windows system partitions. In this tutorial, we’re focusing on the Windows version of VeraCrypt, available as both an MSI and EXE installer.
If you’re considering VeraCrypt for Windows, disable Bitlocker protection via the Control Panel or PowerShell. Visit https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/windows-security/suspend-bitlocker-protection-non-microsoft-updates.
1 YOUR FIRST VOLUME
Click ‘Create Volume’ to start the volume creation wizard. At first, we suggest choosing to create an ‘encrypted file container’ in ‘standard’ format. Choose ‘Select File’
