How to recover password protected files from Outlook?

When we work in Microsoft Outlook with POP3 or IMAP accounts, all the data is saved in a .pst file. To keep our data and its contents secure and to prevent unauthorized access, we can password protect our files in Outlook. It is essential to password protect data if we are handling confidential information. Ordinary users may not be aware of the importance of password protecting their files.

There is also a problem with password protecting our pst files. We may assume that the password is saved in a .pst file but that is not really the case. It is saved by Outlook in a 32-bit hash value which represents the original password. The algorithm which is used to generate this number is just a CRC32 algorithm along with a slight variation. CRC32 is mostly used to check data integrity, but for some unknown reasons, Microsoft has used it for password protection instead of using a secure algorithm, such as MD5 or SHA-1. The disadvantage of using CRC32 algorithm for saving a password is that for any 32-bit number, a lot of matching passwords can be found.

That means that if we set a password for our pst file, it can be opened with a lot of other passwords having the same CRC value. This makes it an insecure method of password protection. Our files can be accessed easily and data integrity may be compromised in that case. It we dealing with critical data, it is a serious cause of concern.

There can be other instances where we are unable to access our pst files. It can be a software malfunction, data corruption, virus attack or accidental file deletion. We will also not be able to access password protected files in these cases. If we face any of these scenarios, we need the help of pst recovery software to recover our data.

Stellar Phoenix -Outlook Pst Repair Software will be able to help you in all the above mentioned cases. This software will repair, recover and restore data from damaged or corrupted pst files. This software stores email messages, contacts, notes and folders on the local drive as a .pst file. It helps you recover e-mail with attachments, contacts list, notes, journals as well as drafts. It also repairs password protected files and encrypted files. Additionally, it provides file recovery a various versions of Outlook. It has a very simple and user-friendly interface.