How to create secured Outlook data files
Posted on June 17, 2008 at 5:21 am
Worried about Outlook security? If you are getting nightmares that somebody could be reading your emails when you are not around then this tip is for you. It could be your wife, mistress, or a random tech support that likes to scour Outlook .pst files for anything that they could make fun of, or worse, blackmail you.
To keep your email secrets deeply hidden on your computer, a password encrypted Outlook Data File is what you need.
First, open your Outlook and click File menu > New > Outlook Data File…
If you are using Outlook 2003 and above you will be prompted with a window that lets you choose what type of Office Outlook file you want to create. Choose the default type to take advantage of the new features like more storage capacity. If you need to open this folder using an older version of Outlook like version 2002 and below choose the other type:
Then in the Create new Outlook Data File window type the name of the folder, in this case I typed “secured.pst” where “.pst” is the required file extension.
Last, put the name of the folder that will appear on Outlook, make sure to choose “Compressible Encryption” or “High Encryption” to encrypt your folder, choose a strong password (i.e. should be long and consists of characters, numbers and non-alpha numeric symbols). Do not check “Save this password in your password list” otherwise you will let anyone who can open your Outlook open this folder too.
Click OK to save the settings.
Once you have the secured folder showing up in your Outlook, move all of your sensitive emails to that folder.
Every time you want to open this folder in Outlook it will ask for the password you typed above:
Now you have a secured Outlook data file which asks for a password every time you need to open it. You can also create rules to move all sensitive emails to this folder. If you want, you can create more than one secured data file to keep things organized.
Stop worrying about Outlook security. Keep your sensitive emails in a secured encrypted folder!
If you’re worried about keyloggers, check out my post on how to detect and bypass keyloggers.
Ben Carigtan is a new contributor writer. A Software Engineer with more than 7 years of technical experience, he will be writing articles covering practical advices and tips for computer users.
» Filed Under Cool Websites
 Save this page |
 Stir it up on Mixx |
|
 Add to Reddit |
 Stumble this page |
Related Posts
- How to convert video files to PSP format?
- Creating picture collages using Google Picasa
- How to make a graph on excel
- How to encrypt your computer’s hard disk data and files for free
- How to determine hard disk space usage
10 Responses to “How to create secured Outlook data files”
Pingbacks
-
Keep Your Outlook Database Secure - Contact Management - Technology For Agents Says:
[...] to your laptop or computer can simply open Outlook and see your database in it’s full form. Online Tech Tips recently published a nice how-to on securing your Outlook database that deserves a [...]
June 17th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Please post your comments/suggestions!
[...] to your laptop or computer can simply open Outlook and see your database in it’s full form. Online Tech Tips recently published a nice how-to on securing your Outlook database that deserves a [...]
June 17th, 2008 at 10:01 am
PST “security” is an absolute joke. All you’re doing is giving a false sense of security with this article, a “secured” PST can be opened in seconds using a freeware tool at http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/pst_password.html.
Graeme, I guess it’s better than nothing! Do you have any other ideas? Another idea I had for securing your Outlook file is to hide the actual folder where the PST is stored using a program like FolderHide.
Here’s a MUCH better way, assuming you log into Windows with your own account, rather than a shared account:
Use Windows EFS to create an encrypted folder (go to My Documents, create a folder called “Encrypted” or something like that, right click it, select “Advanced” and select “Encrypt this folder”), then create an UNENCRYPTED PST file located in that directory. Now, when you log into Windows and open Outlook, the PST file is available, but if someone else logs into the machine or steals the hard drive, the PST file is scrambled.
Ian, that’s a really good idea! You can rest assured your email cannot be read by anyone else as long as they don’t have your password or access to your user account.
As pointed out by Graeme, outlook passwords are easy to hack. Worse, there is no patch from Microsoft yet that could fix this problem within Outlook.
Windows EFS could also be easily hacked if you can have the admin password, and there are a lot of write-ups on how to do this on the Net: http://internetbusinessdaily.n.....-password/
Once you get the admin password, it’s easy to change all the passwords of each PC user. I am sharing computers and securing data on the OS level is a nightmare!
This problem made me look out for an ever more stronger security solutions that will run BEFORE boot time so even when my laptop is stolen, I could be assured that my whole disk is protected (not only my Outlook files!). I use a product called checkpoint to do this and I am yet to find a hacking software for this product: http://www.checkpoint.com/prod.....index.html
I configured my setup in such a way that even if they know the OS admin password, they can’t boot or change it without my pre-boot checkpoint password!
Ofcourse, security doesn’t stop there… in computers there is always a way to hack around passwords!
The attack described is not valid. If an administrator (authorized or not) changes a *local* user account password, it destroys the EFS key and the previously encrypted data is lost. Using EFS to house the PST file is a perfectly acceptable way to protect stored email messages, and is easy for a casual user to implement. There’s no need to complicate this with boot-time passwords or disk partition or such. Those things have their place (I use TrueCrypt for some things, I love it, and it’s free), but they’re not needed here. I’m all about using the easiest effective tool for a job.
Here’s a detailed description of why that attack won’t work:
(Reference this site: http://technet.microsoft.com/e.....y/bb457065(TechNet.10).aspx )
Resetting Local Passwords on Windows XP
Windows XP has new behavior regarding locally changed passwords and EFS. In Windows 2000, when a local user password was reset by an administrator, the administrator or third party could theoretically use the newly changed account to log on as the user and decrypt the encrypted files. In Windows XP, the changing of a local user password by an administrator, or through a method other than by the user, will block all access to previously encrypted files by the user.
In summary, the profile and keys of the user will be lost and will not be available to the account with the reset password. Windows XP gives the following warning when attempting to reset a user account password:
Warning Resetting this password might cause irreversible loss of information for this user account. For security reasons, Windows protects certain information by making it impossible to access if the user’s password is reset.
This feature helps to guard against offline attacks and prevents rogue administrators from gaining access to encrypted files of other users.
Ian, good point in pointing out the weakness of the attack.
but there are many ways around this… if I can get the admin password then I can install rogue hacking softwares right?
what if I have a rogue keylogger service running in a computer that can log all keystrokes? you can find implementations of this that sends logs to a hacker’s email in the background.
I can easily install a keylogger by logging in as a rogue admin. The hacker will just wait until the password arrives to his inbox.
even the strongest encryption passwords typed while the OS is running is always hacked. If the hacker gets the logs of keystrokes all of the OS level security like EFS is useless.
Yes, or one could put a hardware based keylogger (here’s a good one: http://www.keyghost.com/) on there and read the password typed into before the OS loads. Depends on how far you want to take it. I’ll stick with EFS encrypted PSTs.
Haha! the guys at University of California, Berkeley went as far as making an algorithm to listen to keyboard sounds to crack anything typed on the keyboard with a 10$ microphone!
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5865318.html