AxCrypt

AxCrypt can help protect your privacy by encrypting sensitive data. It supports protecting not only individual files but complete folders as well with your own password.

Although the program can work offline, it requires connection to the developers’ servers to get the most of its capabilities. Luckily, you can restrict access to not only local files and folders but also to the ones you keep in cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive.

The program has a nice graphical user interface that is similar in many ways to those of other applications of the same type. It displays a list of protected folders and a series of buttons that allow for such operations as opening a secure file and adding new ones. In addition, you can add new items via the right-click menu in Windows built-in File Explorer. The tool guarantees security by using powerful encrypting algorithms as AES. Also, it assesses the strength of the password you’re using.

In my opinion, there’s just one thing that makes this program out-stand among similar tools, and it is the possibility to share information by allowing other users to access your encrypted data using their own passwords. Fortunately, the free version can be used for most tasks without time restriction. However, some features like 256-bit AES encryption and secure deletion are only supported in the paid version.