Open Source Alternatives to PGP Desktop/SDA
PGP Desktop products (Pro/Home) provide a neat set of features for all your email encryption, file and disk encryption needs in one nice package but for a price. However there are open source alternatives that offer similar features, which are more than enough for home and small business users. PGP Desktop offers great set of features for Enterprise customers with server based management and recovery features, but these features are rarely needed in a small business or home environment. The tools presented here have existed for a while but even then the security and small business community seems to gravitate more towards PGP Desktop, this entry is merely a reflection to say that all the features of PGP Desktop are available for free and in open source if your willing to work with 3 well developed applications.
Public Key Email Encryption/Signing/Decryption/Key Management
The open source alternative to PGP is GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG), there is also a windows port Gpg4Win. One of Gpg4Win’s components - Windows Privacy Tools (WinPT) offers a nice UI shell to GnuPG. If you have previously used PGP the interface is almost similar, a systray utility is always resident to encrypt content in any active window or clipboard. Gpg4Win also installs shell extensions to Explorer that make it easy to encrypt any file in a point-click fashion.
Self Decrypting Archives (SDA)/Secure Delete
In the Enterprise domain a very often used feature of PGP is Self-Decrypting-Archive(SDA), these are essentially a 
symmetric key encrypted executable that can be decrypted without other support tools. When there is a need to exchange confidential documents securely with parties who do not use PGP, SDA’s come in handy. A symmetric key can be agreed upon using offline means(telephone call) and then the SDA created can be mailed safely without worrying about confidentiality. GnuPG lacks the ability to create SDA’s. This can be made up with AxCrypt a utility that uses symmetric keys (AES-128 bit) to encrypt and create SDA’s of any file. It’s free, open source and works really well. AxCrypt also offers Explorer shell extensions to securely delete files.
Disk/Boot/Partition Encrytion
This feature of PGP can be replaced quite ably by TrueCrypt. TrueCrypt goes beyond PGP to offer hidden volumes and cross-platform access. Partition encryption is useful for primary and backup disk encryption.
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Does Gpg4Win recognize the same pkr and skr Keyring files that PGP uses. I would like to export my PGP keyring and use it on GPG.
Thanks,
Rajat.
P.S: Will restart bloggin soon! Been very busy and tired
Yes WinPT can be used to import pkr and skr Keyring files from PGP. It works well, give it a try.
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