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Regardless of what activity you perform on a PC, some of your files are personal, and don’t quite want anyone to have access to them. There are various security measures you can take, with one of the most basic is to create a password-protected archive. This is exactly what Secure Archive wants to help you with, but there’s a bit more than meets the eye.

In terms of visuals, the application looks and behaves like any regular archiving utility, which makes accommodation a walk in the park. A classic window design is used to give all features shape, an upper toolbar that stores most function buttons, as well as a large list where all target files go.

Adding files to an archive can be done in a few different ways. Luckily, a quick method is to just use the dedicated context menu entry, which brings up a small prompt through which to define archiving parameters. Output files are not of regular archive formats, and you’re only able to extract content using this application.

What differentiates this application from a regular archiving utility is the security layers you can apply to files. In other words, you get to choose from various encryption algorithms, such as NASCCL, AES, or BlowFish, different compression levels, and a password that gives the encryption algorithm shape.

Accessing the options menu gives you the possibility to configure a certain number of features related to functionality, look and feel, as well as a few advanced options. You can manually pick the number of cores to use in the encryption process, and whether or not to prioritize them, or boost when possible. In addition you can allocate disk space in advance for large archives, just to make sure the process successfully reaches an end.

Apart from archiving, you can use the application to make sure nobody ever gets their hands on your files ever again. Number of passes is set from advanced settings. To permanently remove something from your HDD, it’s enough to call on the context menu entry and wait until the number of passes removes files from your computer.

On an ending note, Secure Archive is somewhat just what the name suggests. Not exactly a simple archiver, but not a specialized encrypting utility either, it somehow manages to harmonically combine features from each category, wrapping them around in a simple interface, context menu integration, making this application worth a try for both personal activities and work.