Digital Vault

The Digital Vault is designed as an indispensable security tool to protect your personal and confidential data. Digital Vault can encrypt and hide data on your computer making it un-useable or accessible to anyone without the proper access. Once you enter your password, you will have the ability to add and remove files and folders from the vault. Files that are added will be protected using 256Bit Blowfish encryption. Files Added using drag and drop from Windows explorer as well as using the “Add” button from within the program.

A new vault must be created before any files or directories can be added to the vault. Depending on your hardware, the first time that you select “Create a New Vault”, a configuration wizard may load asking you to identify some of your storage devices. Digital Vault needs to identify if certain devices on your system are fixed hard drives or removable storage devices

Examples of removable drives are external Hard drives and Pen drives. These drives can be moved to another computer based on their portability. A permanent drive would typically be your "C:"drive which is permanently attached to your computer. A physical drive, can often be partitioned into 2 or more logical drives, (Have drive letters for each logical drive (i.e.C:, D:, E, etc.).

Only one vault is required to use the software. For organization or other purposes, you have the ability to make any number of vaults with the software. The first step is to select if you wish to create a system vault or a removable vault. System Vaults are vaults that you create on your permanently attached hard drives. Removable Vaults are created on removable media such as USB pen drives and removable USB external hard drives. If you do not have removable drives on your system, then only the System Vaults option should be available.

Once you select the disk location for your new vault, hit the Next button. You will then be presented with a dialog to name your vault. All vaults are password protected by default with the logon password. If you wish to give a different password than the logon password, simply check the “Create a unique password for this vault”, supply a password with confirmation, and optionally supply a password hint. This password is beside the logon password that is used to startup the program.

After selecting “Open an Existing Vault”, A dialog requiring a selection of the vault to open will display. Select the vault you wish to use and hit the OK button to continue. If you have added a password for that vault, a dialog will appear requiring you to enter the correct password before you can continue.

Files and Directories may be added to the vault using the “Add” and “Add Folder” Buttons. Files and directories may also be added by using Drag-in.

If a file is added from a system drive, to a system vault, that file is removed from the drive, and added to the vault. If a file is added from a removable drive to a system vault, a copy of that file is created.

Many types of files that are in the vault can be double-clicked to load. When the file is loaded from within the vault it will automatically become unprotected. Once you are finished with the file and save any changes made, you can re-protect the file by clicking the “Protect” button, or you will be automatically reminded to protect the file when you close the vault.

Buttons:
Add: Adds files to the vault
Add Folder: Adds a folder to the vault. (The content of the folder can not be shown within the vault, the folder must be removed from the secure vault region to be able to view its contents
Remove: Removes the selected item from the vault.
Delete: Deletes an item/items from the secure-encrypted region so that it can not be recovered or viewed.
Protect: Used to protect items in the vault. By default, items when first entered into the vault are protected. Items may then be unprotected and re-protected as needed. Multiselceted items may be protected using this button.
Folder Button: This is a toggle that turns on/off the left folder view panel of Digital Vault.
+Folder Button: This button allows you to create an organizational folder to divide your secure vault area into different regions. You can then drag/drop items in the secure vault region into these new folders.
-Folder Button: Use to remove an organization folder within the secure vault area. Any items in that folder will automatically be moved up in the vault list.
Close: Exits the Vault dialog and returns to the main vault application.

Menu Items:
File Menu:
Add: Add file to secure area
Add Folder: Add folder to secure area
Remove: Remove selected item(s) from the vault
Delete: Delete the selected item(s) from the vault
Close: Closes the currently open vault

Vault:
Change Password: Change the password of the currently open vault
Help:
Help Topics: Loads the help file
About: Loads the software About box.

Encrypt a File: A copy of a selected file is encrypted. You must supply a password that is to be used to encrypt the file. This password will also be required to decrypt the file in the future.

Encrypt and Email: This option performs the same operation as “Encrypt a file...” with the added step of also allowing the file to be sent as an email attachment. The receiver of the email will need to know the password to decrypt the file, and will also require either a copy of Digital Vault, or the Digital Vault Reader.

Decrypt a file: This option is used to decrypt a previously encrypted file. The password that the file was encrypted with must be known for the file to decrypt.

Encrypting/Decrypting individual files under Windows Explorer: Individual Files may also be encrypted and decrypted by right-mouse clicking on the file under windows explorer and selecting the Digital Vault menu item desired.

Change Password: Changes the Master logon password for Digital Vault
Uninstall Program: Used to Uninstall Digital Vault
Remove a Vault: Used to delete a vault
Rename a Vault: Used to rename a vault
Backup/Restore: Use these options to backup and restore encrypted copies of digital vaults. All critical data should always be backed up for safety reasons. A wizard will guide you through the Backup/Restore options. Passwords are required to restore and backup the selected vault
Check Now for Updates: Used to check and update Digital Vault
Auto Update Check Box: Will automatically check for Digital Vault updates periodically when the software is loaded

The Digital Vault Reader is an add-on utility designed to decrypt files that have been encrypted using the Digital Vault’s Encrypt/E-mail Capabilities. Encrypted stand alone files will have a “.vault” extension to indicate that the file has been encrypted using the Digital Vault. These encrypted files can be sent by email where the recipient can decrypt them using either an installed copy of Digital Vault, or can be downloaded from the Migo Software Website.

Users can decrypt *vault files easily by simply loading the file into the reader or by double-clicking on an encrypted *.vault file. Users of the Digital Vault do not need to use the specialized reader to decrypt stand alone encrypted vault files, but the reader is automatically installed with the vault, and is available as a convenience.

Adding Files/Directories to Vault: You should be selective on the type of data files and directories that are added to the vault. Carelessly adding files and folders that are required to run programs may make other software unusable. Digital Vault is designed to protect data files. You should limit files added to the vault to these type of files.

Removable Media: Windows has a “Safely Remove Hardware” utility that should be used whenever removable media devices are disconnected from your computer. This utility is located on your Windows taskbar. Failure to use this utility when disconnecting removable media hardware may result in data lose.