An advantage of 128-bit AES is that it is slightly faster than 256-bit AES, that is, it takes less time to encrypt or decrypt a file. 256-bit AES is stronger than 128-bit AES, but both of them can provide significantly greater security than the standard Zip 2.0 method described below. These numbers refer to the size of the encryption keys that are used to encrypt the data. WinZip supports AES encryption in two different strengths: 128-bit AES and 256-bit AES. This encryption method, also known as Rijndael, has been adopted by NIST as a Federal Information Processing Standard.

Government's National Institute of Standards (NIST).

AES encryption: AES is the Advanced Encryption Standard, which is the result of a three-year competition sponsored by the U.S.

WinZip provides two encryption methods for Zip files (. Once you are familiar with this information, you can read about the specifics of using encryption. This section gives a general overview of WinZip's encryption facilities. In order for WinZip to later extract the original contents of the encrypted files, the correct password must again be supplied. The contents of the files that you want to protect are encrypted by WinZip based on a password that you specify. WinZip's ® encryption facility gives you a way to protect sensitive documents contained in your archives from unauthorized viewing. About Encryption About encryption and encryption methods

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