How To Encrypt A USB Flash Drive?

With the advent of cybercrimes and increased population of skilled hackers, data security is one of the most important concerns. Data infringement can make companies crumble to the ground, and there are several examples of the same. A spyware can steal all your secrets. So, encrypting your devices is very important. The devices that you use to transfer or store data should be essentially encrypted. So, even if you lose your USB flash drive, the data in it could not be stolen or used.

The year 2017 could always be kept as a reminder of all the ransomware attacks that exposed our vulnerability and security loopholes. Coming to the point, this shows that how important it is to encrypt a USB flash drive.

With Windows, you get an in-built feature BitLocker which can encrypt a USB flash drive. In this post, we have listed steps to encrypt a USB flash drive on the go!

Steps To Encrypt A USB Flash Drive

Step 1: Connect your USB drive to your computer. Once you can see that the USB flash drive is connected to your computer, right click on the drive.

Step 2: From the context menu, click Turn on BitLocker.

Note: To access BitLocker, you can launch Control Panel- Type Control Panel in Search Box and launch it.  Now locate View at top right corner and select Large icons from the dropdown list. Navigate BitLocker.

Step 3: You will get a window which shows that BitLocker is preparing to initialize the process.

Step 4: On the next window, you will get an option “Choose how you want to unlock this drive”.

Step 5: From the next window, choose how you want to back up your recovery key.

Step 6:  Now you will get an option “Choose how much of your drive to encrypt”’.

Step 7:  In the next window you will get an option, “ Choose which encryption mode to use.”.

Step 8: Once you have selected all the options as per your preference, before encrypting it will ask, “Are you ready to encrypt this drive?” If you are sure, then click on Start Encrypting to begin the encryption.

Note: You may not get all the steps similar if you are using any other version of Windows than Windows 10. Windows 10 offers better encryption.

In this way, you can encrypt a USB flash drive. Follow the steps and encrypt your drives for better protection and safeguard your data from being stolen.