Announcing another product from my laboratory. PaDEL-Crypt is a portable software for encrypting and decrypting files. The encrypted files are stored in a vault and can only be viewed and decrypted using a correct password. The main intended use of PaDEL-Crypt is to encrypt files in portable devices like flash drives or portable hard disks, so as to maintain data confidentiality in the event of accidental loss of such devices. The targeted users are those who do not have much knowledge about encryption but wish to have a simple solution for adding encryption to their portable devices.
At the current moment, PaDEL-Crypt will run on any platform that have Java installed. Once I figure out how to run GCJ, I will make a native version for Windows so that Java will no longer need to be installed in the target machine. In the meantime, you can use the Java Portablizer to copy the Java JRE to your portable device and make a batch file to make PaDEL-Crypt use that version to run.
It might seem strange why my laboratory, which focuses on applying knowledge discovery and data mining techniques to pharmaceutical and biomedical areas, would produce a product like PaDEL-Crypt. Well, data confidentiality is an important issue in many areas, including the pharmaceutical and biomedical areas. Flash drives are so popular nowadays that most of us have at least one with us. However, most of us did not bother to encrypt the data that are stored in it, which is disturbing because flash drives are easily lost. Although most of the information that we put on flash drives are usually not confidential, there might be some that are confidential and it is important to protect these.
Before developing PaDEL-Crypt, I have looked at a few solutions in the market, including those that come with the flash drives. However, most of these solutions are usable only on Microsoft Windows and are not strictly portable (they leave behind information on the target machine). Thus I decided to develop my own using Java. PaDEL-Crypt is not meant to replace other encryption system for harddisks, like TrueCrypt. Rather, it is meant to complement these systems, which are not portable because they require administrative privileges on the target machine to run. PaDEL-Crypt will be an ideal solution to carry or distribute your encrypted files via portable devices or email. As PaDEL-Crypt can also create self-decrypting archives, the target machine does not even require PaDEL-Crypt to be present in order to decrypt the files.
PaDEL-Crypt is basically free for all to use, with the exception of one group of people. Please see the license conditions at its homepage to find out more.
