Free Security and Encryption Software

Krypt-X - Krypt-X is free steganography software. Steganography is the science of hiding one information inside another, so that your information is hidden from a third party. Krypt-X helps you to hide your text data within images. Krypt-X also provides you to set a password so that only with the help of a password you can decrypt your text from the image file.
Download           OS: Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP           

HandyBits File Shredder - Try this free file delete utility. Simply drag&drop file(s) or entire folder(s) to Shredder’s icon on your desktop, confirm file deletion and nobody can find out what this file was about.
Download           OS: Windows 95/98/Me/2000            Size: 1.48Mb

HandyBits EasyCrypto Deluxe - This is free encryption utility. This is really the easiest and most reliable way to secure your data with strong encryption. You can encrypt both standalone files and entire folders. The high level of security is ensured by using the well-known unbeatable 128-bit key BlowFish algorithm.
Download           OS: Windows 95/98/NT/2000            Size: 1.7Mb

4t HIT Mail Privacy - Protect your confidential email in seconds. There is no doubt that even with conventional email protection, there are unscrupulous people who can and will, intercept and read emails. 4t HIT Mail Privacy Lite provides a quick and easy way of protecting your communications by embedding your text into an image, combined with a particularly strong encryption method, you can be assured your mail is safe. Use any image on your PC, from a pleasant lanscape image to your latest birthday photo, HIT Mail supports a wide variety of image formats and is extremely easy to use.
Download           OS: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP            Size: 900Kb

FreeOTFE - FreeOTFE is an open source OTFE (on the fly disk encryption) software for Windows. It presumably creates encrypted partitions (the documentation does not explicitly state this, nor does it state if it supports the creation of encrypted container files). You mount the encrypted volume under Windows and it appears as a drive which you can use normally. FreeOTFE supports "hidden volumes" which are encrypted volumes that are created inside another encrypted volume. All FreeOTFE volumes also have no identifiable signature. It is compatible with Linux losetup, which is useful if you need to use your encrypted volumes in both Linux and Windows. Supported ciphers include AES and Twofish, and supported hash algorithms include MD2, MD4, MD5, RIPEMD-128, RIPEMD-160, SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512.
Download           OS: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP           

E4M Disk Encryption - Working with documents on your computer where you don't want prying eyes to see? You can get free software that sets up a drive on your hard disk where all files saved will be encrypted. The drive need not be an actual hard disk or partition, it can be a file that is set up to look like a drive to Windows for transparent operation. It is easy to use, free, freely redistributable with the full source code available. It works on all Windows systems. Supported encryption include DES, IDEA, Triple-DES, Blowfish, and CAST. If you find yourself continually encrypting individual files on your computer, this might prove to be the easier o use solution. Note: E4M is no longer being maintained. The link above leads to a third party site.
Download           OS: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP           

PC Utilities Sections: AntiVirus Software, Backup Utilities, Disk Management Utilities, File Compression Software, File Managers, Security, Encryption Software