How do I encrypt things?

[iego]

I like Microsoft Bitlocker because decrypting is as simple as providing a password (among several authentication methods). You also (they) have a recovery key, which can be used to recover your data if you lose your password.

Anything and everything in the cloud can pretty much be considered compromised. Microsoft offers a "bring your own key" encryption for some of their services, but just in general, when your data is in the cloud, if it has not been specifically encrypted by yourself, using a method/key that you are sure of, for sure the Cloud Service Provider can read it, and therefore anyone that can hack them can read it, etc.

There used to be a product called TrueCrypt, which I liked. It offered plausible deniability because you could make a encrypted file, anywhere on your hard drive, which appeared normal, like random data, but was really an encrypted data store.

Today I don't really worry about plausible deniability, I just encrypt everything, and only store my really important things on devices which are not normally decrypted, like flash drives.

Passwords, I have started just keeping on paper. The only times they are digital are when I type them in (which is no good, but sheesh.)

-John

[DireWolf]

There used to be a product called TrueCrypt, which I liked. It offered plausible deniability because you could make a encrypted file, anywhere on your hard drive, which appeared normal, like random data, but was really an encrypted data store.

The new equivalent/successor to TrueCrypt is called VeraCrypt, which also works very well for its intended purposes. Definitely worth a look if TC was something you found useful.

Is encrypting and password protecting a specific folder or file something I can do? If someone can point me in the correct direction I'm sure I can do some research on my own, but this is something I know nothing about. Please point me in the right direction.

If you take a look at VeraCrypt and it doesn't really hit the mark, feel free to PM me and I'd be happy to provide a bit more assistance offline.

Normally I'd elaborate a bit more here, but I quite literally spent all day explaining to a roomful of application architects and developers how to build & integrate extremely high-volume crypto/key-mgt systems...

An iron key might do what you need

Also a good suggestion worth looking into - these have come a long way since originally released.