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Cloud Storage Providers – SourceForge

March 11, 2019 | Author: admin

The Best Cloud Storage Services for 2019

If you are individual who wants to store your photos and music to the cloud, the 3 providers below provide one of the best cloud storage solutions around. When you are storing personal data, chances are you dont need a lot of features like the business owners do.

The cloud is one of the biggest phrases in telecommunications, yet many businesses are not using the cloud. In fact, some users still find the cloud to be a daunting thing. But this is because they dont know how the cloud can greatly benefit their business. One of the big things a business can do to help boost their efficiency and speed is to invest in cloud storage.

Simply put, the cloud storage provides an online space where users can store and share data. It is an important tool for businesses that want secure data storage that can be accessed by employees in any location. Choosing a cloud storage solution takes a bit of research; but once you settle on a cloud storage solution, you will be able to start taking advantage of all the cloud has to offer.

There are four types of cloud storage: personal, public, private, and hybrid. Below we detail each of them to help you better understand your options:

the most common version of this is mobile device backups.Consumersalso use personal cloud services for documents, photos, music and more.

An online storage space that has minimal admin controls and can be accessed by anyone who is authorized.

Typically a companys own data center, either onsite or externally hosted. It gives you the freedom to design the system to meet your needs.

A combination of public and private. You can choose what data gets stored where.

Businesses that are not using any type of cloud storage system are certainly missing out on a number of things. Here are a few of the benefits that choosing a cloud storage provider can bring to your business:

the most common version of this is mobile device backups.Consumersalso use personal cloud services for documents, photos, music and more.

With a cloud storage service,you greatly increase your businessreach. Cloud storage allows you access data from anywhere, and doesnt require you to have costly onsite hardware to store your data. Also, most cloud storage services have multiple distributed data centers in case of failover or natural disasters. This way, you always have access to your data.

cloud storage solutions offer topnotch security that aims at keeping all of your data safe. Most cloud storage services use encryption, thirdparty validation, security software, and more to ensure that your data is protected.

compared to hosting and updating your own equipment, a cloud storage serviceis much more affordable. Plus, cloud storage will help to minimize the time and money you spend on routine backups and system upgrades.

Cloud storage services are widely available, for either personal or private use. Names like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and more are some of the more common names that youve likely heard of. But how do you know what to look for in the best cloud storage solution? Here are a few things to keep in mind:

ensure that you caneasily use,manage,organize,share,and access your cloud storage. A good cloud storage solution will be easy to use and will integrate seamlessly with your operating systems, both mobile and desktop.

in case of an emergency or a natural disaster, you want to make sure that your cloud storage solution has recovery practices in place.

know what type of security measures your cloud storage service uses in order to protect your data. Things like encryption, data protection, authorization, and should be important to you for your security.

be sure to compare pricing across all solutions sothat you meet your needs for the best price. A majority of cloud storage services offer affordable rates that wont break the bank.

Last update: 2016-06-08

Formerly AjaXplorer, file sharing platform for the enterprise

Last update: 2013-04-02

A simple to use drag and drop web interface to manage files online.

Last update: 2016-10-07

Legacy Release only. Get latest Edition here: http://www.openqrm.com.

Last update: 2019-02-24

BTRFS based NAS and private cloud storage solution

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Cloud Storage Providers - SourceForge

Fidelity’s new cryptocurrency company is up and running …

March 9, 2019 | Author: admin

An ongoing cryptocurrency bear market is not dampening interest for Fidelity's new institutional cryptocurrency products.

Fidelity Digital Assets, a new company created by the investing giant last year, has quietly rolled out its cryptocurrency custody and trade execution operations. In the past few months it has been up and running with institutional investors like hedge funds and family offices, according to its top executive.

The collapse in cryptocurrency prices over the last year "haven't had an impact" on getting up and running, Tom Jessop, head of Fidelity Digital Assets told CNBC at the DC Blockchain Summit this week. "If you started a crypto fund at the height of the market you're probably hurting right now."

Bitcoin, along with thousands of other digital coins, sparked a buying frenzy among retail investors in late 2017. The world's largest cryptocurrency has dropped more than 80 percent since its high of almost $20,000 at the end of 2017 and was trading near $3,789 on Friday.

Still, Jessop said there's long-term interest from institutional investors to add some form of cryptocurrency to their portfolios. It's often seen as an uncorrelated risk, or a store of value in a crisis. Others see a trading opportunity given the sector's volatility. Fidelity commissioned research to gauge the level of that interest.

The firm interviewed roughly 450 institutions, everyone from wealthy families to hedge funds, pensions and endowments. About 22 percent of the respondents already own cryptocurrency, according to the findings. Those that already own it expect to double their allocation over five years.

"If anything, they are as encouraged now as they were when prices were higher," Jessop said.

Fidelity's new company will execute trades on multiple exchanges for these professional investors. It also handles custody, or the safe storage of digital assets. Until Fidelity, there had been a noticeable lack of a big U.S.-based company in that business.

Jessop said while the company is live, certain aspects are still a work in progress. Fidelity is expanding the jurisdictional coverage of where it can do business. And its offerings are not one-size-fits-all. Some customers were using the platform in January, while for other customers, it was March. Others may wait until September, he said.

"It really depends on the facts and circumstances of each client," Jessop said.

Fidelity, a roughly 72-year-old family-controlled firm, is known for managing retirement plans and mutual funds. But it also spends $2.5 billion per year on technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain. The new digital asset company was born out of the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, or FCAT as employees call it.

Jessop said many institutional investors are still in "wait and see" mode when it comes to putting money into crypto.

"At some point, there will be an attractive entry point," Jessop said. "But by the same token people don't want to be early even if we're well off the highs."

Much of that hesitation has to do with volatility, he said. The digital currency market has been known to jump or sink by 10 percent in a single day. While prices in 2019 have been relatively stable, institutions are still wary of those sudden price moves, according to the Fidelity survey. That issue should be solved as the market structure matures, Jessop said.

Education is another roadblock to greater acceptance by investors. Jessop said the more educated a firm was on the topic, the more likely they were to be holding cryptocurrency.

"They've approached us wanting to learn, which is an encouraging sign," Jessop said. "That's not to say that there's a cohort of people that once they get educated will still have a negative view."

WATCH:How to start your very own cryptocurrency

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Fidelity's new cryptocurrency company is up and running ...

The Best Cloud Storage Services for Backup in 2019

March 8, 2019 | Author: admin

Cloud storage services are great for sharing files with friends and families, keeping documents in sync between all of your devices, and so much more. Free cloud storage is even better!

Yes, there really areno-strings-attached, free cloud storage services out there. Many of them, actually.While nearly all have premium offerings that provide more space, the free cloud storage offered is usually more than enough for most people.

Better yet, many of these free online storage providers give you even more free space for referring friends or performing other tasks.

Cloud storage is different than automatic cloud backup. The services listed below are great for keeping your files kept online for storage, sharing, and playback, but they will not keep your computer files backed up online on a schedule.

pCloud

10 GB of free online storageis offered by pCloud, with friend referrals and other bonus stepsjumping it to a possible 20 GB.

A desktop client can be installed for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. There's also a mobile app that's very intuitive and easy to use.

pCloudsupports adding files from a remote URL in addition to single file and whole folder uploads through a browser. The mobile apps can upload photos and videos directly to your pCloud account.

Both files and folders can both be shared with non-users. Shared folders can even be downloaded as a ZIP archive.

Also, pCloud allows upload links to be generated for folders so anyone can send files to your account. A unique email address is also generated which lets you (or anyone)email files directly to a folder on your pCloud account.

In addition to the above, you can backup the photos from your social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, and Picasa.

Get pCloud for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, and more.

Dropbox

Dropbox users start off with 2 GB of free space with several simple ways of earning more, up to around 18 GB.

You can view and upload all your Dropbox files from a desktop or mobile app and share whole folders with anyone, even if they don't have a Dropbox account.

If you have Microsoft Office files stored in your Dropbox account, you can edit them from inside your browser for free using Microsoft Office Online.

Get Dropbox for Android, iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, or your computer.

FlipDrive.com

Useful amount of storage.

Cross-platform mobile apps.

Unique file sharing permissions.

No public access to shared folders.

Tiny upload file size limit.

Unfriendly website interface.

New FlipDrive users get 10 GB of initial storage with an opportunity for more for each friend they can refer to start using FlipDrive.

There is a mobile app that can be used for uploading files to FlipDrive, but the website works, too. If you use the web version, you can upload whole folders using the website, which is nice.

You can share files with anyone, even if they don't have a FlipDrive account. However, accessing sharedfolders requires a registered FlipDrive account.Recipients can be given write, edit, delete, and share permissions in addition to read rights for folders.

You can create up to 10 shared links and upload files that are as large as 25 MB.

The FlipDrive website isn't the easiest to use when compared to most other cloud storage services, which is a bummer, but it still manages to function if you can work through it.

FlipDrive downloads are available for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows, and Windows Phone devices.

Google Drive is the cloud storage service offered by Google. Each new user gets 15 GB of free space.

The total storageis actuallyshared with other Google services, like Gmail and Google+ Photos. If you don't use the other services, you canutilize almost all the space for Google Drive alone.

A sync client can be installed for desktop users, which supports folder and file uploads. There's also a mobile app that can sendphotos and videos to Google Drive.

Folders and files can be shared with specific Google users via their email address or anyone with a public link. You can also make a file view-only, which prevents someone from downloading it.

Google Drive makes it really simple to collaborate with others by allowing comments and letting files be opened and accessed my more than one person at a time.

Get Google Drive for iPhone, iPad, Android, or your Mac or Windows computer.

Microsoft

Works with Microsoft Office Online.

Many ways to upload files.

Control how files are shared.

Earn more storage for free.

OneDrive (formerly called SkyDrive) is an online storage service from Microsoft. Everyone gets 5GB of free space when they sign up.

Extra hosting can be awarded if you follow certain instructions, like friend referrals and mobile photo syncing.

A desktop program can be installed to easily transfer folders and files of any type to OneDrive, making them accessible from a mobile device. The mobile app can also upload files both images and videos.

OneDrive supports sharing both folders and files with non-registered users. A permission can be set to only allow viewing or to allow full editing.

You can get the OneDrive app for Windows, Android, iPhone, iPad, and Xbox One.

HiDrive

Get 5 GB of free online storage space with HiDrive. If you refer friends to join, you can increase your storage up to 10 GB.

If you're aWindows or Mac user, youcan connect to your account over WebDAV, which makes it really simple to drag and drop new files to your account.

An app is available that supports mobile photo and video uploads.

When sharing files, you're required to set the URL to expire after a certain number of days and also set a maximum number of allowed downloads before the link becomes invalid.

You can also share folders, and recipients, even non-users, can download all the files at once in an archive.

The HiDrive app is available for iPhone, iPad, and Android.

Yandex

Yandex is a Russian company known mainly for its popularYandex Searchand Yandex Email services, but they also have others, like Yandex.Disk for 10 GB of free cloud storage for anyone who creates an account.

There are plenty of useful features with Yandex.Disk, such as public and privatefolder and file sharing, the ability to import photos via social networks,bulk downloads, automatic mobile uploads, and support for drag and drop.

Windows, Mac, and Linux users can install a desktop program to upload files to Yandex.Disk, and a mobile app is available for Android, iPhone, and iPad.

Sync.com Inc.

Complete tasks to earn more free space.

Web-based folder uploads.

Collaborate with team folders.

Password protect shares.

Not ideal for large files like videos.

Can't cancel web uploads.

Minimal but functional website.

5 GB can of free cloud storage can be had when you sign up for Sync.

Like some of the other services listed on this page, Sync can upload multiple files at once through both the website interface as well as the mobile and desktop app.

You can build shared folders that other users can interact with as well as share any folder or file withanyone, regardless if they're a Sync user.

Vaultis a folder in Sync that you can put files into so that they aren't synced across your other devices. This is useful if you just want to archive some files online but don't need them elsewhere.

See Sync'sfeatures page for a list of its features and some comparisons between the free and pro versions.

This service is available from not only the web but also Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Android.

Softronics

MyDrive is another online storage service but it offers much less space than the majority of the others in this list.There is no limit to how large uploads can be, but you can only store up to 100 MB on MyDrive, which makes the maximum file size 100 MB as well.

MyDrive is very limited compared to similar websites, such as the fact that file sharing is allowed only if you give out a "guest" username and password, and you only get one.

Though I do like thatyou can download multiple files in an archive andrestore deleted files up to a month after removing them from your account.

Adesktop appis available for Windows, Linux, andMac computers, and an Android and iOS app for mobile devices. Plus, you can connect to your account through WebDAV.

Tencent

Another website that gives out quite a bit of online space is Tencent Cloud at Weiyun.com. However, while there is 10 GB of free storage up for grabs, the website and app are not in English, making it pretty difficult to use them.

With that being said, if you're out of options and need these 10 gigabytes, the upload and download buttons are easy enough to understand since they're just pictures.

You can check how much space you have available from this page.

To get logged in to Tencent Cloud, you can download the WeChat app on your phone (it's in English) and use theDiscover > Scanoption to scan the QR code on Weiyun.com, which will get you in and let you use the cloud storage features (use the QR code from the right tab).

Tencent Cloud can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone, and iPad.

More storage than most services.

Apps for mobile and desktop.

Automatically upload files.

Multiple ways to earn more free storage space.

Works more like a backup service.

No external hard drive support.

Can't view saved files on the website.

Degoo gives out a huge 100 GB of free storage to anyone who makes an account.

If you have lots of friends who want to use Degoo to store their files, you can even get 500 GBmoreby referring them to make an account. You get 3 GB for each person that joins through your referral. You can also watch ads to get more free online space (1.2 GB per day).

I've placed Degoo at the very bottom of this list despite its huge 100 GB capacity because it functions a bit more like a backup service rather than a cloud storage program.

You can definitely pick which files are backed up but backups are performed automatically every 24 hours to keep things updated, which makes it work more like a free backup service.

Because Degoo is a bit different than these other cloud storage services, you should use it like this: pick a folder on your computer that will hold all of your backed up files, or make new one. Put everything into that folder that you want to keep online, and then make sure Degoo is running to back up the files online.

You can use the cloud storage account on your computer through the desktop program, or access your files on the go with the mobile app for iPhone, iPad, and Android.

Originally posted here:
The Best Cloud Storage Services for Backup in 2019

Hostway and HOSTING Merge, Creating One of the Largest …

March 8, 2019 | Author: admin

Combined organization to focus on secure, compliant cloud services for enterprises

AUSTIN, TX and DENVER, CO JANUARY 8, 2019 Hostway and HOSTING today announced the merger of the two organizations, combining to create one of the largest managed cloud services platforms in the world. Both companies are known for secure, compliant managed hybrid cloud solutions and together will have an unmatched set of products and services with the ability to scale for their clients growing needs. The combined organization has 14 world-class data centers in five countries across three continents and will be led by Emil Sayegh as CEO and president. Investors Littlejohn & Co., LLC and Pamlico will stay on to equally back the combined entity.

Both Hostway and HOSTING have always had an uncompromising commitment to customer service and an incredible history of pioneering leading-edge solutions into the market. This merger is a natural progression of the two companies focus on providing solutions for CIOs and IT leaders to reduce costs, mitigate risks and increase business agility, said Sayegh. Our combined strengths benefit all our customers by delivering even more product sets and the scalability to adapt to clients changing needs. We will be in a unique position to help customers every step of the way as they make the journey to hybrid cloud environments while protecting them against ever-emerging threats.

Both Pamlico and Littlejohn came together to back this merger because we believe the combination makes for an undisputed leader in IT transformation solutions for mission critical applications, and provides opportunity to dominate the market, said Michael Kaplan, Managing Director, Littlejohn & Co.

Collectively the organization is even better positioned to address the top enterprise IT challenges of security, costs, lack of IT resources, governance and multi-cloud complexity. Both Pamlico and Littlejohn are prepared to fully support the company into its next phase of growth, said Scott Stevens, Partner at Pamlico Capital.

HOSTING and Hostway will continue to operate under two separate brands and operational models for a limited period during the interim integration. The company intends to fully merge all functions and operate under a single brand within the next twelve months.

About Hostway Services

Hostway is the worlds most trusted managed compliant cloud services provider, delivering complex, managed cloud infrastructure solutions for mission-critical software. Its team of engineers in North America, Europe and Asia deliver reliable, secure and scalable managed cloud and hybrid cloud solutions to thousands of customers across eight geographically diverse SSAE 18 and ISAE 3402 data centers around the world all while ensuring strict compliance, such as PCI, HITRUST, FERPA and HIPAA. At Hostway, every customer interaction is treated as an opportunity to develop a long-term relationship based on trust. Visit Hostway.com for more information.

About HOSTING

HOSTING delivers secure, compliant managed cloud services and open technologies that empower organizations to transform their businesses and lead their industries. We provide customers with unmatched security, support and compliance expertise across a broad portfolio of solutions including public cloud, private cloud, hybrid IT and dedicated environments. Our mission is simple to provide the best customer experience for companies running mission-critical applications in the cloud, supported by the industrys best team. HOSTING set the bar in introducing a complete unified cloud solution on the AWS and Azure cloud platforms. The HOSTING Unified Cloud provides customers with an unprecedented flexibility to develop, run and manage custom applications in the cloud without the burden of vendor lock-in.

Visit HOSTING.com and HOSTINGUnifiedCloud.com for more information.

About Littlejohn & Co., LLC

Littlejohn & Co. is a Greenwich, Connecticut-based investment firm focused on private equity and debt investments primarily in middle market companies. The Firm seeks to build sustainable success for its portfolio companies through a disciplined approach to engineering change. For more information about Littlejohn, visit http://www.littlejohnllc.com.

About PAMLICO CAPITAL

Pamlico Capital is a private equity firm founded in 1988 that primarily invests in growing middlemarket companies in North America. Pamlico Capital seeks control-oriented growth equity investments of up to $125 million alongside founders and proven management teams in its target industries; business & technology services, communications, and healthcare. Since inception, the firm, based in Charlotte, NC, has invested over $3 billion. For additional information, please visit http://www.pamlicocapital.com.

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Hostway and HOSTING Merge, Creating One of the Largest ...

What Can We Do with a Quantum Computer? | Institute for …

March 7, 2019 | Author: admin

When I was in middle school, I read a popular book about programming in BASIC (which was the most popular programming language for beginners at that time). But it was 1986, and we did not have computers at home or school yet. So, I could only write computer programs on paper, without being able to try them on an actual computer.

Surprisingly, I am now doing something similarI am studying how to solve problems on a quantum computer. We do not yet have a fully functional quantum computer. But I am trying to figure out what quantum computers will be able to do when we build them.

The story of quantum computers begins in 1981 with Richard Feynman, probablythe most famous physicist ofhis time. At a conference on physics and computation atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Feynman asked the question: Can we simulate physics on a computer?

The answer wasnot exactly. Or, more preciselynot all of physics. One of the branches of physics is quantum mechanics, which studiesthe laws of nature on the scale of individual atoms and particles. If we try to simulate quantum mechanics on a computer, we run into a fundamental problem. The full description of quantum physics has so many variables that we cannot keep track of all of them on a computer.

If one particle can be described by two variables, then to describe the most general state of n particles, we need 2n variables. If we have 100 particles, we need 2100 variables, which is roughly 1 with 30 zeros. This number is so big that computers will never have so much memory.

By itself, this problem was nothing newmany physicists already knew that. But Feynman took it one step further. He asked whether we could turn this problem into something positive: If we cannot simulate quantum physics on a computer, maybe we can build a quantum mechanical computerwhich would be better than the ordinary computers?

This question was asked by the most famous physicist of the time. Yet, over the next few years, almost nothing happened. The idea of quantum computers was so new and so unusual that nobody knew how to start thinking about it.

But Feynman kept telling his ideas to others, again and again. He managed to inspire a small number of people who started thinking: what would a quantum computer look like? And what would it be able to do?

Quantum mechanics, the basis for quantum computers, emerged from attempts to understand the nature of matter and light. At the end of the nineteenth century, one of the big puzzles of physics was color.

The color of an object is determined by the color of the light that it absorbs and the color of the light that it reflects. On an atomic level, we have electrons rotating around the nucleus of an atom. An electron can absorb a particle of light (photon), and this causes the electron to jump to a different orbit around the nucleus.

In the nineteenth century, experiments with heated gasses showed that each type of atom only absorbs and emits light of some specific frequencies. For example,visible light emitted by hydrogen atoms only consists of four specific colors. The big question was: how can we explain that?

Physicists spent decades looking for formulas that would predict the color of the light emitted by various atoms and models that would explain it. Eventually, this puzzle was solved by Danish physicist Niels Bohr in 1913 when he postulated that atoms and particles behave according to physical laws that are quite different from what we see on a macroscopic scale. (In 1922, Bohr, who would become a frequent Member at the Institute, was awarded a Nobel Prize for this discovery.)

To understand the difference, we can contrast Earth (which is orbiting around the Sun) and an electron (which is rotating around the nucleus of an atom). Earth can be at any distance from the Sun. Physical laws do not prohibit the orbit of Earth to be a hundred meters closer to the Sun or a hundred meters further. In contrast, Bohrs model only allows electrons to be in certain orbits and not between those orbits. Because of this, electrons can only absorb the light of colors that correspond to a difference between two valid orbits.

Around the same time, other puzzles about matter and light were solved bypostulating that atoms and particles behave differently from macroscopic objects. Eventually, this led to the theory of quantum mechanics, which explains all of those differences, using a small number of basic principles.

Quantum mechanics has been an object of much debate. Bohr himself said, Anyone not shocked by quantum mechanics has not yet understood it. Albert Einstein believed that quantum mechanics should not be correct. And, even today, popular lectures on quantum mechanics often emphasize the strangeness of quantum mechanics as one of the main points.

But I have a different opinion. The path of how quantum mechanics was discovered was very twisted and complicated. But the end result of this path, the basicprinciples of quantum mechanics, is quite simple. There are a few things that are different from classical physics and one has to accept those. But, once you accept them, quantum mechanics is simple and natural. Essentially, one can think of quantum mechanics as a generalization of probability theory in which probabilities can be negative.

In the last decades, research in quantum mechanics has been moving into a new stage. Earlier, the goal of researchers was to understand the laws of nature according to how quantum systems function. In many situations, this has been successfully achieved. The new goal is to manipulate and control quantum systems so that they behave in a prescribed way.

This brings the spirit of research closer to computer science. Alan Key, a distinguished computer scientist, once characterized the difference between natural sciences and computer science in the following way. In natural sciences, Nature has given us the world, and we just discovered its laws. In computers, we can stuff the laws into it and create the world. Experiments in quantum physics are now creating artificial physical systems that obey the laws of quantum mechanics but do not exist in nature under normal conditions.

An example of such an artificial quantum system is a quantum computer. A quantum computer encodes information into quantum states and computes by performing quantum operations on it.

There are several tasks for which a quantum computer will be useful. The one that is mentioned most frequently is that quantum computers will be able to read secret messages communicated over the internet using the current technologies (such as RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and other cryptographic protocols that are based on the hardness of number-theoretic problems like factoring and discrete logarithm). But there are many other fascinating applications.

First of all, if we have a quantum computer, it will be useful for scientists for conducting virtual experiments. Quantum computing started with Feynmans observation that quantum systems are hard to model on a conventional computer. If we had a quantum computer, we could use it to model quantum systems. (This is known as quantum simulation.) For example, we could model the behavior of atoms and particles at unusual conditions (for example, very high energies that can be only created in the Large Hadron Collider) without actually creating those unusual conditions. Or we could model chemical reactionsbecause interactions among atoms in a chemical reaction is a quantum process.

Another use of quantum computers is searching huge amounts of data. Lets say that we have a large phone book, ordered alphabetically by individual names (and not by phone numbers). If we wanted to find the person who has the phone number 6097348000, we would have to go through the whole phone book and look at every entry. For a phone book with one million phone numbers, it could take one million steps. In 1996, Lov Grover from Bell Labs discovered that a quantum computer would be able to do the same task with one thousand steps instead of one million.

More generally, quantum computers would be useful whenever we have to find something in a large amount of data: a needle in a haystackwhether this is the right phone number or something completely different.

Another example of that is if we want to find two equal numbers in a large amount of data. Again, if we have one million numbers, a classical computer might have to look at all of them and take one million steps. We discovered that a quantum computer could do it in a substantially smaller amount of time.

All of these achievements of quantum computing are based on the same effects of quantum mechanics. On a high level, these are known as quantum parallelism and quantum interference.

A conventional computer processes information by encoding it into 0s and 1s. If we have a sequence of thirty 0s and 1s, it has about one billion of possible values. However, a classical computer can only be in one of these one billion states at the same time. A quantum computer can be in a quantum combination of all of those states, called superposition. This allows it to perform one billion or more copies of a computation at the same time. In a way, this is similar to a parallel computer withone billion processors performing different computations at the same timewith one crucial difference. For a parallel computer, we need to have one billion different processors. In a quantum computer, all one billion computations will be running on the same hardware. This is known as quantum parallelism.

The result of this process is a quantum state that encodes the results of onebillion computations. The challenge for a person who designs algorithms for a quantum computer (such as myself) is: how do we access these billion results? If we measured this quantum state, we would get just one of the results. All of the other 999,999,999 results would disappear.

To solve this problem, one uses the second effect, quantum interference. Consider a process that can arrive at the same outcome in several different ways. In the non-quantum world, if there are two possible paths toward one result and each path is taken with a probability , the overall probability of obtaining this result is += . Quantumly, the two paths can interfere, increasing the probability of success to 1.

Quantum algorithms combine these two effects. Quantum parallelism is used to perform a large number of computations at the same time, and quantum interference is used to combine their results into something that is both meaningful and can be measured according to the laws of quantum mechanics.

The biggest challenge is building a large-scale quantum computer. There are several ways one could do it. So far, the best results have been achieved using trapped ions. An ion is an atom that has lost one or more of its electrons. An ion trap is a system consisting of electric and magnetic fields, which can capture ions and keep them at locations. Using an ion trap, one can arrange several ions in a line, at regular intervals.

One can encode 0 into the lowest energy state of an ion and 1 into a higher energy state. Then, the computation is performed using light to manipulate the states of ions. In an experiment by Rainer Blatts group at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, this has been successfully performed for up to fourteen ions. The next step is to scale the technology up to a bigger number of trapped ions.

There are many other paths toward building a quantum computer. Instead of trapped ions, one can use electrons or particles of lightphotons. One can even use more complicated objects, for example, the electric current in a superconductor. A very recent experiment by a group led by John Martinis of the University of California, Santa Barbara, has shown how to perform quantum operations on one or two quantum bits with very high precision from 99.4% to 99.92% using the superconductor technology.

The fascinating thing is that all of these physical systems, from atoms to electric current in a superconductor, behave according to the same physical laws. And they all can perform quantum computation. Moving forward with any of these technologies relates to a fundamental problem in experimental physics: isolating quantum systems from environment and controlling them with high precision. This is a very difficult and, at the same time, a very fundamental task and being able to control quantum systems will be useful for many other purposes.

Besides building quantum computers, we can use the ideas of information to think about physical laws in terms of information, in terms of 0s and 1s. This is the way I learned quantum mechanicsI started as a computer scientist, and I learned quantum mechanics by learning quantum computing first. And I think this is the best way to learn quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanics can be used to describe many physical systems, and in each case, there are many technical details that are specific to the particular physicalsystem. At the same time, there is a common set of core principles that all of those physical systems obey.

Quantum information abstracts away from the details that are specific to a particular physical system and focuses on the principles that are common to all quantum systems. Because of that, studying quantum information illuminates the basic concepts of quantum mechanics better than anything else. And, one day, this could become the standard way of learning quantum mechanics.

For myself, the main question still is: how will quantum computers be useful? We know that they will be faster for many computational tasks, from modeling nature to searching large amounts of data. I think there are many more applications and, perhaps, the most important ones are still waiting to be discovered.

Originally posted here:
What Can We Do with a Quantum Computer? | Institute for ...

The Best Cloud Storage for 2019 | Reviews.com

March 7, 2019 | Author: admin

The Best Cloud Storage

After evaluating more than 45 different options, interviewing power users across the nation, and testing the top apps, we are confident that our picks are the best, most reliable cloud storage providers on the market today. All four will provide you with roughly the same lineup of features, and each has a version that'll let you take advantage of the cloud without paying a dime. The right cloud storage option will offer the space you need on the operating system you love at a price youre ready to pay.

Nearly half of our initial list only offered accounts to businesses, not individuals. Theres a reason theyre not offered to people: they come with a plethora of features that most people would find confusing to use. More importantly, most people dont need features like task management and user comments to get the most of out the cloud. We booted those off our list right away. The best cloud storage will offer a free version for those looking to gain only the minimum out of the service -- and even this minimum shouldnt be too limiting. The ability to utilize secure cloud storage shouldnt be limited to those with business accounts; although security tends to be emphasized more on the business side, we favored those that secured personal as well.

We know that most people are staunchly team Apple or team PC. Cloud storage, regardless the type, should let you have the freedom to access and import the data you want from wherever you are, using whatever device you choose. Some of the contenders we considered didnt offer services to Windows and OS X, Android and iOS -- if that was the case, we put them on the chopping block.

Speaking of the people who use the cloud, out of the users we surveyed, 53 percent primarily use cloud storage for media and file sharing services. What did that tell us? That people arent looking purely for a backup service. We wanted our top picks to be well-rounded and empower users with the tools to share and collaborate work rather than focus on automated, system-level backups so we nixed backup-focused services.

After a broad first pass of all cloud-based software solutions out there, we compiled a list of 45 different providers. To narrow it down to the best online storage sites, we surveyed people who use the service, read reviews from top technology blogs, dissected user guides and toyed with settings. We then spent a week testing them all on four different operating systems (OS, Windows, iOS, and Android) and on seven different devices. We updated files, shared a ton of pictures, and installed a bunch of apps. We even used Google Drive to write and edit this review.

We also tested the transfer speeds for each contender by uploading a leisurely afternoons worth of iPhone photos (about 30) from three different locations. Microsoft OneDrive consistently logged the fastest times, while Box and Dropbox duked it out for last place.

We concluded that all of our top recommendations will probably get the job done. Choosing the right one comes down to how much youre willing to pay and which operating system youve already invested in.

Best for Light Data Users

Dropbox

Streamlined features across operating systems and a new collaborative tool make Dropbox intuitive to use but a low data limit for the free account make it a no-go for super users.

ProsEase of useCamera Upload feature

ConsLow storage amount for free users

Dropbox is easy to use, so if youre new to online file storage, this is a great place to start. The file management is intuitive, and all the apps (including the browser client) are built around a minimalistic theme that offers the same fluid experience on all major operating systems and devices which is something we cant say about all of its competitors. Whether youre on an iPhone or a Galaxy, the operating system integration is tight, and youll feel right at home.

One of Dropboxs handiest features is Camera Upload especially because theres no file size limit on mobile. Enable it from the Photos menu on your phone or tablet, and any photo you take will automatically be uploaded to your Dropbox account the next time your device connects to a WiFi network.

Dropbox is very basic, and its collaborative features are a bit behind other services like Google Drive although it did release a more synergistic tool, Dropbox Paper, in 2017. The one underlying issue is that, unlike the more classically collaborative Google Drives 15GB of free storage space, youll have to pay $10 per month if you want anything more than 2GB with Dropbox. And if you want to utilize the handy Camera Upload feature, note that photos pile up and can burn through 2GB pretty quickly. However, if you do want extra space, we suggest paying outright for a full year (youll end up paying less per month).

Best for Teams and Collaboration

Google

If youre buddy-buddy with Google already, using Drive is an easy-to-use no-brainer. But if youre tentative about signing up for an account, youll have some thinking to do.

ProsCollaborative file sharingSearch functionality

ConsGoogle-centric (works best on Google products)15GB for all Google services

Drive is more than a cloud storage service; its a powerful, collaborative office suite that wraps all of Googles services into a neat little package we considered it one of the best file sharing and storage sites. You can create spreadsheets, documents, presentations, Google Forms and connect to a whole slew of third-party apps everything you do syncs conveniently into your account as long as you have an internet connection. And if you dont have a connection -- all you have to do is enable offline access and use the Google Drive extension for Chrome.

Like most file-sharing interfaces, Google lets you specify the people you want viewing or editing your work at any given time, and you can easily grant or deny access requests. You can also opt for Googles Backup and Sync feature, which lets you connect your Drive to your personal computer and any other files you choose outside the existing data in your cloud storage.

Another seriously powerful aspect of Drive is its search functionality, which uses Googles image-recognition technology, or optical character recognition (OCR), to surface photos that are relevant to your search keywords. For example, when we searched for cat, it found documents that included the word cat and photos of one of our team members yorkiepoo (who apparently could pass for a cat).

Google Drive works best on Google-fied devices (although we were truly happy with how smoothly the iOS apps run). Drive also requires a Google account, which means youll have to create one whether you like it or not in order to use the cloud services. It might also be worthwhile to consider how this tight-knit Google circle affects your life. The company has a history of breaching user privacy and even admitted to gathering unsolicited information.

Because all of the companys services are integrated with Drive, they dip from the same 15GB pot you get with the free account. For us, thats not enough; one of our testers had amassed almost 10GB just in archived emails in his personal account over the past five years, which would leave him with only 5GB of space for everything else. If he were a photo-fanatic, that wouldnt be a whole lot of space.

Best for Devoted Windows Users

Microsoft

An intuitive user experience, at its best within the Windows ecosystem. The free version has a low data limit, and the user experience isnt quite as smooth as its competition.

ProsEase of usePhoto storage

ConsSecurity historyLow data limit for free users

Previously known as SkyDrive, OneDrive is Microsofts own combo of a cloud storage solution and an Office suite. If youre primarily a Windows or Microsoft Office user, taking advantage of this cloud is almost effortless. OneDrive is deeply integrated with Windows 10 and Windows Phone and best serves those already invested in the ecosystem. However, outside the Windows system, its a bit more difficult to navigate. We also had to go through the verification process several times before it stuck on all the devices that we used throughout the week.

As far as the user experience goes, were legitimately impressed with its clean (albeit Dropbox-esque) interface on iOS devices. OneDrive also performed well and actually logged the fastest times during our upload test.

Like its competitors, OneDrive offers an automatic photo-backup feature and its actually pretty great. The Photo menu does a good job of automatically grouping your image files according to some predefined tags. For example, one of our testers went pond fishing this past spring, and the pictures of him in a boat were tagged #Outdoor and the landscape photos of the lake were tagged #Waterfront. OneDrives browser client even lets you ship image files directly to the nearest Walgreens for prints when you want them.

Microsoft doesnt offer encryption services for personal OneDrive accounts; business and SharePoint online are the companys only encrypted online storage platforms. This means if you want to use your own personal account through Microsofts cloud and not have to deal with potentially compromised information, you might have to encrypt your own data to ensure your files are secure. In addition, the companys history of battling privacy concerns goes hand-in-hand with its reputation for tracking users without transparent disclosure.

If you dont want to shell out extra money for storage, Microsoft OneDrive only gives you five GB, which is on the lower end of our free options. So if youre a heavy photo-user, this wont give you much leeway.

Best for Enterprise Solutions

Box

We can only recommend Box to businesses but its capabilities for that audience made it hard to ignore.

ProsBusiness-oriented featuresExpanded privacy controls

ConsUpload limit

Really, its a lightweight business toolkit as long as youre using the browser client, that is. Although the mobile apps only have basic functionality, one huge benefit to using Box is that it can be integrated with a ton of third-party apps and services, including Asana, Facebook, and IFTTT. So if youre working with a small team, Box is a great choice. Its also efficient for those who want the basic Business features but dont want to pay for the Enterprise option. And even if you arent ready to upgrade at all, Box still gives 10 GB of storage to free users.

Boxs privacy controls are independently analyzed by third-party auditors, and every file you store is encrypted using AES-256 bit encryption. Box also offers built-in FTP support and gives you full disclosure of the information it tracks from your data.

Box didnt fare as well as our other contenders in our upload speed test. It wasnt always last, but it wasnt always first, either. Its important to note that you only get 250MB per file for a free and personal account, and 5GB for business/enterprise accounts.

To know how to tailor your cloud storage search, youll need to know how much available data you want at your fingertips. Are you sharing files all the time? Are you uploading photos (which are bigger files than documents) constantly and wanting to maintain their resolution? Once you have a decent idea of what you use on a daily basis, youll be able to narrow your search based on data storage availability and price.

The best cloud storage options will offer more than just a backup service. They should also facilitate easy file sharing, collaboration options and ways to manage your data in both business and personal settings. All of our top picks offer these options.

Its a good idea to look at what types of encryption (in-transit and at-rest are customary now) and authentication methods are offered, and it also wouldnt hurt to look into the companys history with handling user data. Also, its important to check whose handling your data. Some companies have their own data centers to store user data, while others toss information to third-parties. Because of this, we suggest rummaging the service level agreements to see where and how your data is being stored your cloud companys reputation might not be the only one you need to evaluate.

One of the best ways to gauge user-friendliness before trying a product is to look at the customer satisfaction ratings. We suggest looking for an average of 3.5 stars or higher from users on the App Store and Google Play Store to make sure your pick is (generally) well-liked and offers a good mobile experience.

Whether youre looking for a personal or business account, its in the best interest of any cloud storage service to offer a free version (hello, roping in new users), but its also a win for us consumers, especially when it comes to free encrypted cloud storage (hello, security). Many personal users wont need the space provided in a premium plan, and plenty of services offer a free version thatll more than satisfy why pay when you dont have to?

What does secure cloud storage look like?

Yes, there are a lot of things that could go wrong (take the Yahoo and Equifax data breaches, for example), but that doesnt mean you have to live in fear of the cloud just be smart with your data. Our top recommendations offer cutting-edge protection: two-factor authentication, facilities that are protected with 24-hour monitoring, and data thats encrypted in transit (SSL and TLS) and at rest (128-bit AES and on).

What shouldnt you store in the cloud?

At Reviews.com, we use cloud storage every day and just recommend healthy caution when it comes to the cloud: Its important to consider the risks before uploading sensitive information, like tax documents or bank statements, especially with a service that isnt a well-known and trusted authority in the cloud world.

How can cloud storage be used for collaboration?

Slow Wide Turns operates and communicates between multiple systems and cities scattered throughout the U.S., and file sharing and system backing is crucial to our success and overall company organization. Our design department is constantly submitting artwork files to be reviewed by directors and owners who operate in cities 500 miles apart. Uploading files to a well-organized, shared Google Drive account allows for a swift review process and has nearly eliminated the shortcomings related to file sharing and storage we had previously experienced.

Chad Woody, co-founder and product designer of Slow Wide Turns

Dropbox has saved my business from the blue screen of death. Now anyone in my company can access critical documents from anywhere. We pay for Dropbox for business so that we can have extra room to store 16 years of data about our company and clients. We have team member folders and we use it to store a repository of graphics and images that we use on the blog and to promote the brand as well. I really love how easy it is to use.

Melinda Emerson, author, speaker and host of #Smallbizchat

One size doesnt fit all the storage you need might not even be in this review. Thats why weve listed similar reviews here.

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The Best Cloud Storage for 2019 | Reviews.com

Ask a Techspert: What is quantum computing? – blog.google

March 6, 2019 | Author: admin

Editors Note: Do you ever feel like a fish out of water? Try being a tech novice and talking to an engineer at a place like Google. Ask a Techspert is a new series on the Keyword asking Googler experts to explain complicated technology for the rest of us. This isnt meant to be comprehensive, but just enough to make you sound smart at a dinner party.

Quantum computing sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie. But its real, and scientists and engineers are working to make it a practical reality. Google engineers are creating chips the size of a quarter that could revolutionize the computers of tomorrow. But what is quantum computing, exactly?

The Keywords very first Techspert is Marissa Giustina, a research scientist and quantum electronics engineer in our Santa Barbara office. We asked her to explain how this emerging technology actually works.

What do we need to know about conventional computers when we think about quantum computers?

At a first glance, information seems like an abstract concept. Sure, information can be stored by writing and drawinghumans figured that out a long time ago. Still, there doesnt seem to be anything physically tangible about the process of thinking.

Enter the personal computer. Its a machinea purely physical objectthat manipulates information. So how does it do that, if its a physical machine and information is abstract? Well, information is actually physical. Computers store and process rich, detailed information by breaking it down. At a low level, a computer represents information as a series of bits. Each bit can take a value of either [0] or [1], and physically, these bits are tiny electrical switches that can be either open [0] or closed [1]. Emails, photos and videos on YouTube are all represented by long sequences of bitslong rows of tiny electrical switches inside a computer.

The computer computes by manipulating those bits, like changing between [0] and [1] (opening or closing a switch), or checking whether two bits have equal or opposite values and setting another bit accordingly. These bit-level manipulations are the basis of even the fanciest computer programs.

Ones and zeros, like "The Matrix." Got it. So then what is a quantum computer?

A quantum computer is a machine that stores and manipulates information as quantum bits, or qubits, instead of the classical bits we were talking about before. Quantum bits are good at storing and manipulating a different kind of information than classical bits, since they are governed by rules of quantum mechanicsthe same rules that govern the behavior of atoms and molecules.

Whats the difference between a bit and a qubit?

This is where it gets more complicated. Remember that a classical bit is just a switch: it has only two possible configurations: [open] or [closed]. A qubits configuration has a lot more possibilities. Physicists often think of a qubit like a little globe, with [0] at the north pole and [1] at the south pole, and the qubits configuration is represented by a point on the globe. In manipulating the qubit, we can send any point on the globe to any other point on the globe.

At first, it sounds like a qubit can hold way more information than a regular bit. But theres a catch: the rules of quantum mechanics restrict what kinds of information we can get out of a qubit. If we want to know the configuration of a classical bit, we just look at it, and we see that the switch is either open [0] or closed [1]. If we want to know the configuration of a qubit, we measure it, but the only possible measurement outcomes are [0] (north pole) or [1] (south pole). A qubit that was situated on the equator will measure as [0] 50 percent of the time and [1] the other 50 percent of the time. That means we have to repeat measurements many times in order to learn about a qubits actual configuration.

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Ask a Techspert: What is quantum computing? - blog.google

IBM hits quantum computing milestone, may see ‘Quantum …

March 6, 2019 | Author: admin

IBM is outlining another milestone in quantum computing -- its highest Quantum Volume to date -- and projects that practical uses or so called Quantum Advantage may be a decade away.

Big Blue, which will outline the scientific milestone at the American Physical Society March Meeting, made a bit of a splash at CES 2019 with a display of its Q System quantum computer and has been steadily showing progress on quantum computing.

In other words, that quantum computing buying guide for technology executives may take a while. Quantum Volume is a performance metric that indicates progress in the pursuit of Quantum Advantage. Quantum Advantage refers to the point where quantum applications deliver significant advantages to classical computers.

Also:Meet IBM's bleeding edge of quantum computingCNET

Quantum Volume is determined by the number of qubits, connectivity, and coherence time, plus accounting for gate and measurement errors, device cross talk, and circuit software compiler efficiency.

IBM said its Q System One, which has a 20-qubit processor, produced a Quantum Volume of 16, double the current IBM Q, which has a Quantum Volume of 8. IBM also said the Q System One has some of the lowest error rates IBM has measured.

That progress is notable, but practical broad use cases are still years away. IBM said Quantum Volume would need to double every year to reach Quantum Advantage within the next decade. Faster progress on Quantum Advantage would speed up that timeline. IBM has doubled the power of its quantum computers annually since 2017.

Once Quantum Advantage is hit, there would be new applications, more of an ecosystem and real business use cases. Consumption of quantum computing would still likely be delivered via cloud computing since the technology has some unique characteristics that make a traditional data center look easy. IBM made its quantum computing technology available in 2016 via a cloud service and is working with partners to find business and science use cases.

Here'show quantum computing and classic computing differsvia our recent primer on the subject.

Every classical electronic computer exploits the natural behavior of electrons to produce results in accordance with Boolean logic (for any two specific input states, one certain output state). Here, the basic unit of transaction is the binary digit ("bit"), whose state is either 0 or 1. In a conventional semiconductor, these two states are represented by low and high voltage levels within transistors.

In a quantum computer, the structure is radically different. Its basic unit of registering state is the qubit, which at one level also stores a 0 or 1 state (actually 0 and/or 1). Instead of transistors, a quantum computing obtains its qubits by bombarding atoms with electrical fields at perpendicular angles to one another, the result being to line up the ions but also keep them conveniently and equivalently separated. When these ions are separated by just enough space, their orbiting electrons become the home addresses, if you will, for qubits.

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Its Time You Learned About Quantum Computing | WIRED

March 6, 2019 | Author: admin

Youve probably heard of quantum computing. Do you understand it? Unlikely! Its time that you did.

The basic ideatap into quantum physics to make immensely powerful computersisnt new. Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman is generally credited with first suggesting that in 1982. But in the past few years the concept has started to become more real.

Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and a pack of startups are all building and testing quantum computing hardware and software. Theyre betting that these machines will lead to breakthroughs in areas such as chemistry, materials science, logistical planning such as in factories, and perhaps artificial intelligence.

It will probably be years before the technology is mature enough to be broadly practical. But the potential gains are so large that companies such as JP Morgan and Daimler are already experimenting with early machines from IBM. And you dont have to be a giant bank or auto maker to play with quantum computing. Both IBM and Rigetti Computing, a startup that opened its own quantum computing factory last year, have launched services to help developers learn about and practice with quantum computing code.

So how do they work? You may have heard that the normal rules of reality dont always apply in the world of quantum mechanics. A phenomenon known as a quantum superposition allows things to kinda, sorta, be in two places at once, for example. In a quantum computer, that means bits of data can be more than just 1 or 0, as they are in a conventional computer; they can also be something like both at the same time.

When data is encoded into effects like those, some normal limitations on conventional computers fall away. That allows a quantum computer to be much faster on certain tricky problems. Want a full PhD, or third-grade, explanation? Watch the video above.

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Its Time You Learned About Quantum Computing | WIRED

How to Encrypt Files on Windows – Tutorial – Toms Guide

March 6, 2019 | Author: admin

If you're looking for a simple way to keep files and folders private on your Windows computer, you have several options right in front of you. Thanks to the Microsoft Office Suite, you can use a built-in encryption feature to password-protect Office files, such as Word documents or PowerPoint presentations.

Some Windows operating systems also come with Encrypting File System (EFS), which lets you encrypt any kind of file, as well as whole folders and subfolders. Note, however, that EFS is only available for Windows 10 Pro, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 8 Pro or Windows 8 Enterprise. Users with a Home edition of Windows will need to use either Office Suite encryption or a third-party solution, such as TrueCrypt, VeraCrypt or 7-Zip.

Illustration: Toms GuideTo set up your Windows encryption, you'll want to follow these step-by-step instructions.

MORE: Best Password Managers

Before you start altering your files, there are some tips you need to keep in mind.

This process encrypts individual files compatible with Microsoft Office applications such as Word, PowerPoint or Excel. Once you encrypt a file this way, you'll need to reopen it in Microsoft Office; you won't be able to open it in Google Docs, Adobe Reader or LibreOffice. These steps work for all up-to-date versions of Office, across Windows 7 and Windows 10.

1. Open a Microsoft Office program and click Open Other Documents.

2. Click Browse.

3. Select a file you want to encrypt and click Open.

4. Click the File tab at the top of the page.

5. Click "Protect Document" on the left side.

3. Select Encrypt with Password from the pop-up menu.

4. Enter a password for the file. You'll be prompted to re-enter the same password, then click OK. After you exit this file, you'll have to enter the same password to reopen it. Be sure to store this password in a separate, safe place.

You're not quite done yet, though. One of the flaws with Microsoft Office's encryption is that unencrypted versions of recently opened files might still be stored in your computer's temporary memory. You'll want to go clear that out after you've encrypted a file.

1. Click the Start button.

2. Type "Disk Cleanup" into the text field and select Disk Cleanup.

3. Wait for the loading bar to complete, it's calculating how many files it will be able to delete.

4. After the window "Disk Cleanup for OS (C:) appears, check the box next to "Temporary files" (you may need to scroll down) and click OK.

5. A new pop-up window will appear asking you to confirm the deletion. Click Delete Files.

6. Youll see a new pop-up window (pictured below) with a loading bar running as your files are deleted. Once it's finished, the window will disappear and the temporary files are gone.

EFS works by letting you apply encryption to already-existing files or folders in your file system. You can still edit or modify these files or folders following the encryption process. With EFS you won't notice any change in the way you access your files; all you have to do is log in to your Windows account at startup and the files will be accessible. However, this means that you need to pick a strong, difficult-to-guess password for your Windows user account. Note: Step 7 is time-sensitive, so make sure to click the "Back up your file encryption key" prompt after confirming attribute changes in step 6. Missing that prompt means you'll need to start over again.

1. Right-click on the file or folder you wish to encrypt.

2. Click Properties selection at the bottom of the menu.

3. Click Advanced under the General tab. This will bring up a second pop-up window entitled Advanced Attributes.

4. Check "Encrypt contents to secure data."

5. Click OK.

6. Click Apply.

7. Choose how extensive you want the encryption to be, click OK. You can choose to encrypt just that folder, or to encrypt all of the folder's subfolders and files. We recommend the latter. Whichever you choose, click that option and then press OK.

8. Make sure to click the "Back up your file encryption key" pop-up message before it disappears. If you miss the pop-up message, you'll need to restart your machine and try again.

The computer creates an encryption key using an encryption certificate provided by Microsoft. Now your file or folder is encrypted, you won't need a password to access it other than the password you use to sign into your Windows profile when you turn the computer on.

You should back up that encryption key to a separate device, because if that key is ever lost or damaged, you won't be able to access your encrypted files. The easiest method is with an external USB drive, so plug one into your PC before starting.

1. Click the option "Back up now (recommended)."

2. Click Next.

3. Click Next again.

4. Check the box next to Password, enter your password twice and click Next.

5. Click Browse.

6. Navigate to a directory, such as a USB drive, name your encryption key and click save.

7. Click Next.

8. Click Finish.

9. Click OK, now eject your USB drive (or wherever you stored the file) and keep it somewhere safe where you'll remember it.

Windows' built-in encryption isn't a perfect solution. If you encrypt a single file, the computer stores an unencrypted version of that file in its temporary memory, so a savvy snoop can still access it.

It's fairly easy for an attacker to break Windows encryption using a brute-force attack, which is when an attacker uses a program that methodically guesses every possible combination of letters and numbers, starting with common passwords.

MORE: Your Router's Security Stinks: Here's How to Fix It

If you're very serious about security and privacy, you might not trust a Microsoft solution. The FBI and NSA can require U.S. companies to hand over data or encryption keys. For those reasons, we suggest using a free third-party service, such as TrueCrypt, its successor VeraCrypt or WinZip.

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How to Encrypt Files on Windows - Tutorial - Toms Guide

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