Quick Crypt creates self-expiring encrypted files

Quick Crypt looks on first glance just like many of the other file encryption tools for Windows. You can use it to encrypt files using 256-bit AES encryption, and also decrypt those files again at a later point in time.

It does however make available features that are not that common or available at all in other programs of its kind including an option to set expiration dates for encrypted files.

Note: Quick Crypt requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.

When you first start the program the main tab is displayed to you. Here you can select the file that you want to encrypt or decrypt, set a password, and add a password hint if you want. Files can be added via drag and drop, or the built-in file browser.

You can then hit the encrypt file button right away to start the process, or switch to the advanced tab first to make additional modifications first.

Here you find several interesting options:

1. Encrypt file using a system ID unique to the PC. Attempts to decrypt the file on other computer systems will result in errors even if the correct password is entered.
2. Set a file expiration date. The file cannot be decrypted anymore once the expiration date is reached.
3. Create a distributable zip file. This adds the Quick Crypt program and the encrypted file to a zip file for easy distribution since Quick Crypt is required to decrypt an archive.

Both file expiration and unique ID systems worked well during tests. The program stops the decryption process if either the system ID does not match and the option has been set, or if the file has expired due to its expiration date.

You can save configurations as profiles so that you can load them again at a later point in time without having to make configuration changes in the program directly each time.

The program runs a file verification check automatically to make sure files have not been modified after they have been encrypted. There is also an option to securely erase the target file -- that is the file that you encrypt -- to remove it from the computer's hard drive in a way that it cannot be recovered anymore.

Verdict

Quick Crypt is a new encryption program that introduces several interesting features. It is new on the other hand and since there has not been any audit yet, you may not want to use it in a business environment or for important files yet because of that.