Encrypting File System

lastmod 2026-11-10created 2023-01-262 edits

Encrypting File System (EFS) is a file-level encryption feature provided by NTFS on Windows. When you enable encryption in a file's attributes, the file is encrypted and decrypted automatically with the user account's certificate and key, so other users cannot read its contents even if they access the same disk. Its scope differs from BitLocker, which encrypts the entire disk.

See also

• Filesystem