Important documents should be locked in a filing cabinet and the same applies to files on a PC. Similarly, sensitive information should be disposed of properly.

Steganos Security Suite 6 is a reliable alternative to the built-in options found in Windows. It covers seven areas of data protection, all for the price of £50.

Passwords are crucial when protecting data from unwanted viewing. If you use an insecure password, no amount of encryption in the world will keep your files safe. Thankfully, this is not the case for Security Suite. Every time you enter a password, the Password Manager gives you an indication of how secure it is, or if it is already in the dictionary of around half a million common passwords. If you use different passwords for different websites or files, you can drag and drop your otherwise impossible-to-remember encrypted password into the required entry field.

Steganos Safe creates a secure virtual drive to store important files. When these drives are open, they appear just like any other hard disk drive. When they are closed, the drive is not displayed in My Computer and the files are encrypted, keeping the information safe. Each drive can be up to 4Gb in size, so it is feasible to store audio and video using this method. You can also create several drives, which is useful if more than one person has access to the PC.

Having large amounts of information encrypted is all very well, but how do you back up this data or move it between computers. The Portable Safe option allows entire CDs and DVDs to be created and encrypted with decoding software when required.

Keeping email contents private is also important. Security Suite can send and receive encrypted messages as self-executable program files that will reveal the message when opened. You can also save as a.cab file to get round the security options in Outlook Express.

The File Manager is used to encrypt and hide individual files and folders. Files are hidden using 'steganography' (hiding one file inside another). This is a very effective way of keeping information hidden, as no one will know a file is there even if they have the means to decrypt it.

The Internet Trace Destructor is responsible for making sure that your surfing habits are not visible to other people. It works by clearing the Internet History folder and any traceable cookies. It can also clear the recent file list in Microsoft Word.

When a confidential file is not needed any more the best thing to do is delete it. However, deleted files are often easy to recover, even when removed from the Recycle Bin. The Shredder application can overwrite data at three levels of security. The Gutmann method is the most secure and overwrites the area of the file 35 times to ensure that it's definitely dead and buried.

These seven programs offer a very high degree of security for everyday computer use. They can hide files as well as encrypting them. The price is reasonable for such a comprehensive piece of software, but this inevitably comes down to the value you place on security. As with any program of this type, care should be taken as a lost password could spell the end of all your files.

Contact: Steganos 00800 7834 2667
www.steganos.com