This is just one aspect of the total encryption. Using the Symmetric Key (FEK) the file is encrypted.

The speed of symmetric algorithms is about 1000x faster than that of the traditional asymmetric encryption techniques.

And these increase in speeds of encrypting files helps the users to effectively encrypt large chunks of data. The main positive aspect of using two different algorithms is that the speed of encrypting those files. This FEK is in return encrypted with a public or a private key algorithm like RSA and stored with the file. The key used for these kinds of symmetric encryption is called as File Encryption Key (or FEK). The file data is then encrypted with a symmetric algorithm called as DESX. It uses symmetric key encryption with a combination with public key technology to protect files. There are other Cryptographic file systems available on other operating systems apart from Windows but Microsoft EFS is exclusive only to the Windows Operating Systems. It is supported on Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server editions.

It is available on a high range of Windows operating systems. The Encrypting File System or EFS Encryption is one of the components of the NTFS file system.

Encrypt folder windows 10