Windows Vista comes with a couple baked-in utilities (Bit-locker, EFS, Private Folder) for encrypting files and folders. In the past, I have used True Crypt and Encript On Click for securing my high security folders and files. I am wondering if anyone has any opinions about these Vista security utillities compared to 3rd party security applications.

It appears to me that the Private Folder utility is similar to True Crypt in that you mount and dismount virtual folders using a user generated password. I like using build in OS functions/utilities if they are pretty much as good a 3rd party apps for their ease of use and system integration purposes.

If NTFS drives using EFS/Private Folder are as secure as setting up TC virtual drives, I would ike to use these features of Vista in place of 3rd party security applications.

Any opinions?

From what I've read, TrueCrypt is better than Windows built-in security features like Encrypting File System (EFS) and BitLocker. This seems to be the general consensus among users.

Edited November 14, 200916 yr by Supernova

True Crypt has an advantage in terms of portability. You can install a copy of TC on a flash drive and take it and the encrypted folder with you to use on another machine that may not have Vista on it.

This would be for a notebook so portability would not be an issue. True Crypt is widely acknoweldged to be one of the best (and free) security utilities round. It is, however, a little complicated and "techie" to use, whereas the Vista utilities are more user friendly.

Bitlocker could be circumvented in Vista, I don't know if they've improved it or not. Truecrypt has a good reputation.

MS private folder was a power toy utility that was pulled pretty much as soon a sit was release due to group policy problems in a work envoirment, im pretty saure that isnt built in with vista

Using TC. Staying with TC. Certainly not considering changing to any "security" from MS.