When Edward Snowden set about exposing intelligence programs around the world, he had a goal in mind: to prevent similar captures in the future.

At this point, it doesn't feel like Snowden has achieved his goal. It was only in early December that the FBI received broad powers to spy on computers located overseas, including in Russia. Many politicians in the United States are unanimous in their opinion: during the Trump presidency, such organizations will receive even more rights.

The UK has already taken similar measures: here, from November 29, the secret services received legal grounds for large-scale collection of information on the Full Take principle. For Snowden, this means "the most powerful surveillance in the history of Western democracy." And he is not the only one who holds such views. The EU Personal Data Protection Commissioner also sees the current situation as “more than just dangerous.”

"For every attack there is a method
protection"

Edward Snowden, whistleblower
According to Snowden, it is wiser to disclose
as little personal information as possible

Proponents of surveillance use the principle “I have nothing to hide” as an argument. The only catch is that if the secret services can dig into your personal data and contacts without any restrictions, there is always a risk of abuse and errors.

For example, Germany has one of the best data protection laws in the world, but even there data is at risk due to a new law regarding the activities of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND).

If you store your information in the cloud, in most cases it falls under the jurisdiction of other countries. However, even in such a situation it can be reliably protected. The method has already been proposed by Snowden - this is encryption. Why only a few users are still doing this is easily explained - comfort decreases.

But with the help of our tips, you don't have to choose between safety and convenience. We'll show you how to thoroughly encrypt your data on your local computer, smartphone, and in the cloud. We pay special attention to ease of setup and optimal “coupling” with the corresponding operating system.

Thanks to this, you will not only hide confidential information from the eyes of the secret services, but also prevent hacker attacks, because even if intelligence agencies cannot decipher your data, then hackers will be even more so.

Protecting data on your PC

Let's start with Windows. Information on your home computer is best protected by encrypting the entire hard drive. However, on older machines with poor performance, it makes sense to encode each folder separately. Below we describe each of the methods.

We use hardware encryption

Encrypting modern hard drives is easier than you might think, as they offer their own encoding methodology. To do this, they use Opal SSC (Opal Security Subsystem Class). This standard allows you to encrypt the disk directly on the media controller. This way the operating system remains unaffected.

Cryptographic algorithms for encrypting files
> AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)
Successor to DES. A key with a length of 192 or more characters, for example, AES-192, is considered reliable
> DES (Data Encryption Standard)
A joint development of IBM and the US NSA. Only the latest versions such as 3DES and Tripple-DES should be used.
> Twofish
It is freely available as a public domain key. Among experts it is considered reliable and not known to have any loopholes.

To find out if your drive supports Opal technology, check the product data sheet on the manufacturer's website. There you will also find tools to activate this function. In the case of Samsung, for example, this is the Magician program. After activation, the hard drive will ask you to enter the specified password before starting the OS.

Two points should be paid special attention: do not use additional encryption in parallel - for example, through the BitLocker tool in Windows. This often causes problems, with many users even reporting data loss.

In addition, you should disable encryption before removing the hard drive, since the decoding software only runs if the hard drive acts as bootable media with the operating system. At the same time, if you connect such a drive to another computer via USB, the drive will seem completely empty.

Disk encryption with third-party software

Windows 10 also offers its own hard drive encryption software, BitLocker. However, it is only available for the “Professional” and “Corporate” versions. Owners of the Home version can use the free VeraCrypt program (veracrypt.codeplex.com) as an option.

After launching VeraCrypt, select the option “Encrypt the system partition or entire system drive”. In the window that appears, click on “Normal”, and then on “Encrypt the whole drive”. Thanks to this, all data on the system and all other partitions will subsequently be encrypted.

A pop-up window will ask if VeraCrypt should also encrypt hidden sections. As a rule, you should answer “Yes”. However, keep in mind that in this case the utility will also encrypt the recovery partition, if one exists. This section is used by some businesses to initiate the boot process.

In the last dialog box, create a rescue disk - VeraCrypt will suggest this automatically.

Encrypt individual folders

On slow and old computers, it is still worth abandoning full encryption. We strongly recommend creating a so-called container for such cases.

This creates a virtual disk on which confidential information is saved. It is automatically encrypted and stored in a file on your hard drive.

And in this situation, you can use the VeraCrypt program. In the encryption settings window, click on the “Create an encrypted file container” option and follow the Wizard’s instructions.

Encrypted USB drive

Every year, Russian residents purchase USB drives worth hundreds of thousands of rubles. These miniature media are very convenient to use, but are incredibly easy to lose.

If you store confidential information on them, the person who discovers your flash drive can read it without any problems. We can correct the situation AES encoded drives.

> Inexpensive to create Encrypting a regular flash drive with VeraCrypt will help with such a drive. Problem: every computer where you will connect it must have this software installed.
> The most reliable- those that have encryption integrated by default, including DataTraveler2000 from Kingston. However, such devices are more expensive than regular ones by as much as 6,400 rubles. Data access is opened only after entering a password on the keyboard built into the device.
> Maximum comfort offers . This drive has a built-in fingerprint scanner. A flash drive encrypted with a reliable AES key is recognized by the system only after successful authentication. Of course, such super technology cannot be cheap. For 100% data protection, you will have to pay approximately 18,000 rubles.

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