Q. What Operating Systems does Personal Fortress support?
A. Personal Fortress runs in both Windows XP and Vista. This Beta is only for Windows XP. The Beta for Vista will be available in a couple of weeks.

Q. Is there a Mac version of Personal Fortress?
A. Not at this time, but we are evaluating the possibility for the future.

Q. Are there any programs that are incompatible with Personal Fortress?
A. If you have Truecrypt installed, you need to uninstall it before you install Personal Fortress. We plan to remove this conflict in the next release. We are unaware of any other software conflicts, but if you feel you've encountered an issue, please contact our support team at support@fortressw.com.

Q. Are there any additional requirements to run Personal Fortress?
A. Personal Fortress requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 in order to run. If you do not have it installed, the Personal Fortress installer will automatically download and install it for you.

Q. Why do you require a system reboot after installation?
A. There are system services running, even before logging into Windows. In order to offer complete protection from startup to shutdown, Personal Fortress needs to have a process running from boot up.

Q. Why is it necessary to install Personal Fortress just to access the files inside a capsule?
A. To protect your files, after they are decrypted, from unauthorized copying, Personal Fortress has a process running in the background to monitor and secure your data. If the recipient did not install Personal Fortress, this level of protecting your file is cannot be reached.

Q. When I create a Fortress, it asks me to make a Fortress Password and an Administrator Password. What is the difference?
A. The Fortress password is what you will give to others that you wish to securely access your capsule. They will access your content not be able to leak any of your content with only the Fortress password. The Administrator password grants admin rights, which disables security features, allowing the user to remove all secured files from the Fortress. In order to login as an Administrator, one must enter the Fortress password to decrypt the capsule and the Administrator password to be allowed the special access.

Q. What usage model does Personal Fortress employ for creating and accessing the content in the Fortress?
A. Personal Fortress emulates many of the simple features of Windows Explorer. When you drag a file into an existing Fortress using Personal Fortress Console, it is automatically added. There is no ‘save’ button as all work is done real time - what you see in the Console is what you have. When starting a new Fortress, please keep in mind that you must click ‘Create’ before any setting created for the new Fortress.

Q. When I login to a Fortress, I notice an extra drive is mounted in Windows. What is this Secure Drive (X:) that is created?
A. The X:\ drive is the secure virtual area where your files are temporarily decrypted (but still protected!) while you are logged into a Fortress. In Windows Explorer, the drive is listed as Secure Drive for Fortress ‘FortressName’ (X:). You can treat the X:\ drive as any normal hard drive, but remember that the files in the X:\ drive cannot be removed or copied out without administrative access to the Fortress.

Q. What if I already have an X:\ drive?
A. If you already have an X:\ drive, the Secure Drive virtual workspace will be created with different, unused drive letter, starting with Y:\ if that is not already taken.

Q. Can I save files directly to the Secure Drive (X:)?
A. Yes, but please make sure you save files into the X:\FortressFiles\ folder. Any files stored in the X:\ drive root area will not show up in the staging area of the console.

Q. How do you delete a USB Fortress or revert it back to a normal USB drive?
A. One option is to use Personal Fortress, click on the “Fortress List” tab, click on your USB Fortress(es), then click “Delete”. Another is to simply remove all data on the drive by opening it in “My Computer”, selecting all data, right-clicking, and then choosing “Delete”.

Q. While using Personal Fortress, I noticed a few windows have red borders. What happened?
A. As a reminder for users, Personal Fortress highlights all windows that are secured with red borders. The window in which you display a protected file has a red border. As additional applications come into contact with this secured data, their windows display a red border as well.

Q. Can I send a capsule to a user who isn't running Windows XP?
A. Yes! Users of Windows XP and Vista should have no problems exchanging capsules with each other.

Q. How can I find my Fortresses and Capsule files?
A. Fortresses are listed on the “Fortress List” tab and individual capsules are, by default, saved in the My Documents\My Fortress Files directory unless you changed the location by changing the options setting.

Q. When a capsule is attached to an email automatically, does it matter which email client I'm using?
A. Personal Fortress currently supports automatic emailing through Outlook, Outlook Express, and Eudora. If you do not use any of these programs, you can still email capsules. Please save the capsule to a file and manually attach it to your email.

Q. Can I compress a capsule in Winzip or similar program to make my files smaller?
A. Personal Fortress automatically compresses the files included in each capsule; however, there should be no problem including a capsule inside of an archive. Make sure you extract the capsule from the archive before viewing the files in Personal Fortress.

Q. Can I include compressed files (.zip and .rar) inside a capsule?
A. Although we already compress the files inside each capsule, we do support opening files from within .zip and .rar formats from inside the capsule. We do not recommend this. Because zip files attempt to write to temporary directories, it would be a security leak to allow them to run from within a capsule. We are looking into a secure solution for future releases; however, we strongly suggest using the capsule for your compression needs as it has a very simple interface.

Q. I edited a document within a capsule. Will my changes be saved after I log out?
A. All changes to a Fortress are retained. If you made changes to a Fortress and want to move those changes to another computer, encapsulate your fortress, move the capsule file to the other computer, and double click it to add that capsule's changes.

Q. How do I access a capsule once it has expired?
A. As a security feature, once a capsule has expired, there is no way to access it. Please contact the originator to resend the file inside a capsule with a new expiration date.

Q. What is the maximum size for a capsule?
A. The capsules themselves can be any size; however, they use a form of FAT32, which limits the size of each file inside the capsule to 4GB per file.

Q. I automatically backup my hard drive. Will my capsules be backed up as well?
A. Yes. All capsules would be backed up as a capsule file, but will not show the files that they contain. The capsules remain encrypted throughout this operation. In fact, by keeping your important files in capsules, you ensure an encrypted, safe backup.

Q. I've specified a name for my capsule, but when it is created the name has additional numbers appended to it. What do they mean?
A. The numbers reflect the date and time of capsule creation. They assist you in managing multiple capsules with similar names.

Q. In what ways does Personal Fortress protect my data?
A. Personal Fortress is running in the background even before secure data is accessed. It ensures that the protected data cannot be copied to unsecured sources, printed, or in any other way duplicated, accidentally or deliberately.

Q. Can I secure any kind of file type with Personal Fortress?
A. Personal Fortress officially secures files created in Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel, and Adobe Acrobat. Other file types should work without incident; however, they are not officially supported. For other applications, try our enterprise grade release, Workgroup Fortress.

Q. How can I securely send a file to a friend and allow him/her to edit, copy, and print it freely?
A. At a minimum, it is important to be able to transmit files securely. Select “Encryption only” when you trust the recipient, but still want the added benefit of encrypting during transmission.

Q. Does Personal Fortress protect against viruses?
A. Personal Fortress is not designed to be an anti-virus software. We encrypt and protect specific files to ensure that neither they nor their contents can be viewed or copied by unauthorized parties, providing an extra level against phishing. However, the same blocking mechanism used to prevent sensitive data from being viewed remotely can prevent malwares/viruses from copying your private data to outside of the encrypted area.

Q. What type of encryption does Personal Fortress use?
A. Personal Fortress incorporates the Blowfish encryption algorithm with a 256-bit key.

Q. How is Personal Fortress different from the encryption software I've installed?
A. In addition to encrypting your files, Personal Fortress protects the files while they are being accessed. Encryption software is useful only when data is being stored or transmitted, not accessed.

Q. When logged in as an ordinary user in secure mode, I tried dragging files out of the Fortress and the only thing that copied out was a folder. What happened to my files?
A. To prevent any security leaks, Personal Fortress does not allow files to be removed from a fortress by guest users. Folders may copy out, but none of their contents will.

Q. What should I do if I encounter a bug?
A. From within Personal Fortress, please click help, and then click send debugging information. The debug information will be packaged and attached to a message form from your default email program. If you do not use Outlook or Outlook Express, please create a new email message with the email program that you do use.

Please write a brief explanation of what you encountered, then click send to pass that information to our engineers. If you encounter any other issues or have other questions, please email Fortressware's support team at support@fortressw.com. Please let us know the best means of following up with you, by specifying email, phone, or chat.

Q. Does Personal Fortress record or transmit any personal or identifiable information about my computer?
A. Personal Fortress does not transmit any information. If you send a debugging report to Fortressware, the log contains no personally identifiable information and is used only to fix bugs.

Q. Is Personal Fortress available in any languages other than English?
A. For now, Personal Fortress is only available in English. If you would like to see versions in other languages, please email your request to support@fortressw.com and depending on demand, we will do our best to facilitate.