We like 7-Zip, which is completely free and open-source, so it won’t try to nag you for any money. Nearly every popular encryption utility offers this features. Later versions of Windows dropped the password-protection option entirely. Even if you’re still using Windows XP, you shouldn’t use this feature. However, Windows XP used the extremely insecure “standard” zip file encryption algorithm. Windows XP even offered a way to password-protect and encrypt these Zip files.

Windows offers a built-in way to create Zip files. It’s generally on the top of other file compression benchmarks we’ve seen, too. Really, 7z is great - it came out on top in our file-compression benchmarks. Whenever you create a password-protected 7z file, you know that it’s securely encrypted. The 7z archive format requires strong AES-256 encryption.

You may just want to use a different archive format, such as 7z. It’s still possible to get AES encryption with Zip files - but such files will require third-party software to view, anyway. RELATED: Benchmarked: What's the Best File Compression Format? Even some third-party utilities are reluctant to switch to AES for their Zip encryption as it means those AES-encrypted zip files will then be incompatible with the built-in Zip features in Windows, Mac OS X, and other software. This means that using the Zip password-protection features found in Windows XP, current versions of Mac OS X, and even typical Linux desktops won’t give you securely encrypted Zip files. Unfortunately, many pieces of software - particularly operating systems with built-in support for Zip files - don’t support the newer AES encryption standard. There is no built-in ability to unzip ZIP files in Google Drive or Gmail, so ZIP Extractor is a third-party application that provides this functionality. The older Zip 2.0 encryption is extremely insecure, while the newer AES encryption is fairly secure. There are actually two types of Zip file encryption. Download the free version here which does not expire and includes most of the features of the professional version.Zip 2.0 Legacy Encryption vs. A free version of Express Zip is available for non-commercial use only.

Software for zip files