SerpentCryp for Windows

If you're looking for a simple file encryption utility, this freeware may fill the bill for small files.

SerpentCryp has a small, single-pane window as its interface, which includes only two menus: File and Encryption. This simplicity emphasizes the apps lack of bells and whistles, but also its ease of use. This free app encrypts and decrypts, and allows you to set up a passkey--that's it. It uses a multiblock encryption algorithm with bit slicing called the Serpent algorithm.

In our tests, we found greater speed with smaller files. SerpentCryp encrypted a 30k file in 60 seconds. A 240k file required about 10 minutes. A 9,900k PDF file took nearly half an hour to encrypt. Although a large PDF is a far more complex file than a smaller Word document, users who must encrypt or decrypt a lot of large files may want to look at a more robust app. But for most users whose need to encrypt files arises infrequently, SerpentCryp provides the ease of use that anyone can appreciate and it's a cheap addition to their toolboxes.