Enter your password into the provided boxes and click OK to create your encrypted archive file. If you do opt to go with Zip, be sure to select the AES-256 encryption method instead of the weaker ZipCrypto method. If you don’t see the menu option here, you can also open the 7-Zip application directly and use it to create an archive.ħ-Zip will create a 7z archive by default, but you can also choose Zip. Be sure to select the “Add to archive” option, as it gives you the ability to set a password. With 7-Zip installed, you can select some files in a File Explorer or Windows Explorer window, right-click them, and select 7-Zip > Add to archive. We like 7-Zip, which is completely free and open-source, so it won’t try to nag you for any money. Nearly every popular encryption utility offers this features. Later versions of Windows dropped the password-protection option entirely.

Even if you’re still using Windows XP, you shouldn’t use this feature.

However, Windows XP used the extremely insecure “standard” zip file encryption algorithm. Windows XP even offered a way to password-protect and encrypt these Zip files. Windows offers a built-in way to create Zip files. It’s generally on the top of other file compression benchmarks we’ve seen, too. Really, 7z is great - it came out on top in our file-compression benchmarks. Whenever you create a password-protected 7z file, you know that it’s securely encrypted. The 7z archive format requires strong AES-256 encryption. You may just want to use a different archive format, such as 7z. It’s still possible to get AES encryption with Zip files - but such files will require third-party software to view, anyway. RELATED: Benchmarked: What's the Best File Compression Format? Even some third-party utilities are reluctant to switch to AES for their Zip encryption as it means those AES-encrypted zip files will then be incompatible with the built-in Zip features in Windows, Mac OS X, and other software. This means that using the Zip password-protection features found in Windows XP, current versions of Mac OS X, and even typical Linux desktops won’t give you securely encrypted Zip files. Unfortunately, many pieces of software - particularly operating systems with built-in support for Zip files - don’t support the newer AES encryption standard. The older Zip 2.0 encryption is extremely insecure, while the newer AES encryption is fairly secure. There are actually two types of Zip file encryption.

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