On-the-fly encryption without administrative rights.

On-the-fly encryption without administrative rights is possible!

As you know many disk encryption softwares lack the ability to be used on a Public computers (without having Administrative rights). Because they need to install virtual disk driver first, but this is possible only when you have Administrative rights (i.e. only on your Home PC). This issue becomes more significant when portable encryption solution is needed.

Encrypted disk explorers
A very few disk encryption solutions have a portable Disk Explorer utility that allows working with an encrypted disk image in an off-line manner (without mounting virtual disk letter). But you can’t work with the files as regular, you can only extract the needed file outside Disk Explorer and then open it. Then you need to Import file back to the Disk Explorer if you have changed it. In this case “On-The-Fly encryption” principle doesn’t work. And there is security disadvantage – you may leave ‘un-encrypted files’ somewhere, and you can’t work with big files.

But now Rohos Mini Drive enhances portable encryption and offers “On-The-Fly encryption” even in traveler mode by using Rohos Disk Browser:

• Now you can double click any file to open it immediately in associated application. And work with it in a regular way.
• You can open big files (for instance watch an encrypted AVI file, listen to music).
• There is no ‘un-encrypted’ data stored on a Guest PC or unsecured part of USB flash drive.
• you can run Portable Applications! (experimental feature. not all of the Apps may work)

Rohos Mini Drive creates encrypted partition on any USB flash drive and you can use it on any PC. You can also use this partition on Public PCs without having administrative rights. This is possible by using Rohos Disk Browser that allows opening any Rohos partition container (FAT/FAT32/NTFS, read/write), browse it, extract files and now Virtualize Files for any application.

File Virtualization

Now we introduce File Virtualization feature to allow opening files from Rohos Disk Browser in associated application without first decrypting them into temporary folder. Rohos virtualizes file presence for the application, thus it works with encrypted file by using “on-the-fly” encryption principle. This is analog of Virtual Disk technology but it doesn’t involve disk-driver and works on per-application basis.

How does it work:

1. When you double-click on a document in Rohos Disk Browser, it searches for associated application.
2. Then Rohos launches this application with File Virtualization embedded module and a virtual file name as a command line.
3. Application opens this file, but all read\write requests are passed to Rohos Disk Browser.
4. Rohos Disk Browser encrypts or decrypts ‘on-the-fly’ a needed file portion in rеturn.
   The Virtual File is not visible to any other application except within the one that was launched by Rohos Disk Browser.

When you double-click on PortableApps\*\ EXE file Rohos will virtualize all folder structure and files and run portable application.

But our Virtualization technology needs testing and polishing so we encourage you to help us. 

Download or Upgrade to the latest Rohos Disk Encryption v.1.7 or Rohos Mini Drive v.1.7. to try new feature:

• Run Rohos Disk Browser (RBrowser.exe) and open your Encrypted Disk (*.RDI) file.
• Double-click any file…
• or use ‘Virtualize Folder’ function.

Currently we have tested many file types like BMP, JPG, PNG and also TXT, RTF, DOC, XLS, PPT, ZIP, RAR, MP3 and AVI files.

Also it is possible to open any other file types and portable applications (EXE files).  If you have a file that Rohos Disk Browser failed to open please, post here the file name, extension and what Application is suppose to open it.

Data security risks on a Guest PC

Please note when you use encrypted USB flash drive on a guest PC there are a few risks for your confidential data. It may happened that an owner of this PC has installed a special monitoring software that may collect a certain information about your confidential data on the encrypted USB flash drive: the password itself, the name of the secret disk, file names and folder names from the disk, the files itself, the content of your confidential files (by periodically making system screen-shots)

In order to minimize your risk Rohos Disk software offers a few additional features:

1. Virtual Keyboard designed specially for Rohos Disk. Use it and your disk password could not be monitored and recorder.
2. Rohos Disk Browser allows to work with an encrypted volume with a special way so that no any other application or system filter driver could monitor the existence of your encrypted disk.
3. Steganography allows to hide the fact of having encrypted data on the USB drive.