CryptoExpert – Review 2020 – PCMag India

Antivirus programs aren’t perfect. There’s always the chance that a zero-day data-stealing Trojan will hoover up your personal files before your antivirus knows how to deal with it. For the most sensitive files, encryption is the solution. Some products encrypt individual files and folders, while others, like CryptoExpert, create encrypted storage locations for those files and folders. It does what it promises, but lacks some features that would improve security.

At $59.95, CryptoExpert costs more than most competing products. However, that’s a one-time price, not a yearly subscription. Each year you keep using it, the price per year goes down.

What Is Encryption?

Sometimes you don’t need unbreakable encryption, just a cipher that keeps people from seeing things they’re rather leave unseen. Geocachers are supposed to find hidden caches just by using GPS and intuition, but cache hiders sometimes leave hints very lightly encrypted using the ROT13 (short for “rotate 13”) cipher, which replaces each letter with the letter 13 positions beyond it. Movie spoilers online may also use ROT13.

When you really do need to protect sensitive data, you use a modern encryption algorithm, not a funky old cipher. Their output bears no visible connection to the data that went in, and cracking a modern encryption algorithm would take an impossibly long time. The US Government’s official encryption algorithm is Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Bruce Schneier’s Blowfish algorithm is also well regarded in security circles.

It seems convenient that the same key encrypts and decrypts your data, but in fact the most advanced encryption methods go beyond this simple symmetric encryption. If you want to share an encrypted file, you must securely transmit the key to the recipient (separately from the file, of course). Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) cryptography avoids that problem. In this system, if I want to send you a file, I look up your public key and encrypt the file with it. You use your private key to decrypt the file. Conversely, if I want to prove to you that a document comes from me and hasn’t been modified, I encrypt it with my private key. The fact that you can decrypt it with the public key proves its legitimacy. Yes, those digital signatures actually use PKI.

Getting Started With CryptoExpert

Installation is quick and easy, as is common for this type of product. A popup balloon calls attention to the products icon in the notification area. This icon brings up a simple menu with just three items: Open CryptoExpert, Help, and Exit.

I found that the Help menu item did nothing. This was true of the main window’s Help menu item, and of the Help button on the Options dialog. I did manage to launch the CHM-format help file manually.

The program’s main window resembles that of Windows Explorer, with a folder tree down the left and a display of available drives on the right. You can explore the regular file system in this window, but there’s no real reason to do so.

Like Cypherix Cryptainer PE, CryptoExpert lets you protect your files by storing them in secure vaults. When open, each vault looks and acts like an ordinary disk drive. You can perform all expected file actions, just as with an actual drive. But when the vault is locked, its contents are completely inaccessible.

Cypherix goes to some effort to hide even the existence of your secured volumes. The files that represent the secured volumes get cryptic names by default, and the program encourages you to change the default storage location. CryptoExpert’s files simply use the name you chose for the vault. In addition, while Cypherix stores the name and location of your primary vault, it doesn’t do so for any additional vaults. I’m not sure how much security this adds, but it’s a noticeable difference.

The help system recommends using the supplied AES encryption. Blowfish is also available, as is Triple DES, the more-secure replacement for the original Data Encryption Standard (DES). CryptoExpert also offers the less-common CAST-256 algorithm; those using the 30-day free trial are stuck with CAST-128, and must use the encryption key 123.

In fact, I had to perform this evaluation using the free trial version. My company contact and the support team proved seriously unresponsive, and never did supply me with a registration code.

Create and Use a Vault

As with Cypherix, vaults are portable. You can copy one to removable media and move it to a new location. So it makes sense that the first choice you make in the New Vault wizard is whether to actually create a vault, or to just load one that you brought from elsewhere.

Next you name the vault and either accept the default location or chose another. As noted, the name you enter becomes the name of the file that holds the vault’s data. You can set the vault’s size by moving a slider that goes from zero to all available space, or enter the desired size in KB, MB, or GB.

CryptoExpert doesn’t rate the strength of your password the way AxCrypt Premium, CryptoForge, and Advanced Encryption Package do. However, it does recommend at least eight characters, and advises against using dictionary words from any language. Advanced Encryption Package, from the same publisher as CryptoExpert, does boast a password generator, but at the default settings it creates terrible passwords.

You can now open the vault. As with Cypherix, it’s possible to work with the vault right inside the product itself, but for full file management capabilities you need to view it in Windows Explorer. The only options on the internal viewer’s right-click menu are Open, Rename, Delete, Copy, and Cut. Drag-drop doesn’t work, and I found that I could not copy/paste from Windows Explorer into the product.

I created several vaults, just to get a feel for the process. Oddly, each time I opened a vault I simultaneously got an error message saying “the file is not mounted” and a notification area popup stating that the drive was successfully mounted. The popup was correct.

When I went to lock the vaults again, I got a warning stating that the drive was in use, and recommending that I close all applications that might be editing files on the drive. This was, in fact, untrue No files were being edited. The only time this message didn’t appear was when I didn’t add any files before locking the vault. Indeed, when I clicked the button that was supposed to report which process was causing trouble, the program stated it could not find any.

As with Cypherix, the program defaults to assigning the first available drive letter. If you need a consistent letter, you can hard-code it, preferably starting at Z: and working your way down. You can optionally open the vault as read-only, or mount it so it appears to be a removable drive.

Interesting Options

By default, CryptoExpert automatically locks after 20 minutes of inactivity. You can change the timeout, if you wish, and optionally set it to lock when the computer hibernates.

Like CryptoForge and AxCrypt, CryptoExpert can optionally hold the vault password in memory. With CryptoForge, you specify how long the passphrase will stay in memory. CryptoExpert forgets the passphrase after a specified length of time elapses with no user activity. My own thought is that this feature is more relevant for products that encrypt specific files and folders, less so for products that create secure storage.

Here’s a nice feature. You can store a vault’s password on a USB drive, as a second authentication factor. By default, that’s the only password needed. To get true two-factor authentication, you should set it to ask for the password to mount the vault. You can also set it to automatically mount the corresponding vault when the USB drive is plugged in. A management console lets you track and manage all USB drives used in this way. And yes, a single USB drive can open multiple vaults.

Other Approaches

CryptoForge, Cypherix SecureIT, Advanced Encryption Package, and AxCrypt all work by encrypting and decrypting individual files, not by creating secure storage. However, AxCrypt has a feature that’s somewhat similar. When you sign out, AxCrypt automatically encrypts all files in folders you’ve flagged for that treatment.

CertainSafe Digital Safety Deposit Box does keep your files in secure storage, but in quite a different way. Its storage is cloud based, and your files get split up and stored on different servers, for security. CertainSafe’s security overall is top-notch.

I should point out that the secured vault technology that makes up the entirety of CryptoExpert’s functionality is just one small feature in several high-end security suites. Kaspersky Total Security and Bitdefender Internet Security both have a vault feature that’s similar to CryptoExpert. Top-tier suites from McAfee and Trend Micro also offer something similar. All cost more than CryptoExpert, but they offer an amazing abundance of features.

Most of the encryption products I’ve looked at include a secure deletion utility, to scrub all traces of unencrypted originals after you encrypt them or move them to encrypted storage. Like Cypherix, CryptoExpert lacks this feature. CertainSafe can integrate secure deletion, but you must supply a third-party utility for that purpose.

Plusses and Minuses

CryptoExpert promises to create encrypted storage vaults for your important files, and it totally does that job. It even offers two-factor authentication, something not many competitors have. But it doesn’t have secure deletion, and in testing we found that it displayed what seemed to be erroneous error messages. It’s also rather expensive.

We’ve identified three products as Editors’ Choice for consumer-accessible encryption tools. AxCrypt Premium is by far the most modern and easy to use, and it’s one of just two reviewed product that offers public key cryptography. CertainSafe Digital Safety Deposit Box costs more, but its security is unbeatable. And Folder Lock wraps a comprehensive set of encryption tools in a pleasant, easy interface.

CryptoExpert Specs

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Further Reading