Windows Phone is a very sophisticated mobile and used by a very specific elite class. Not everyone, can handle Windows Phone because of it’s different operating system than other mobile devices. Like every device, Windows Phone is also vulnerable to various hacks and breach by unauthorized people. This guide on ‘How To Encrypt Your Windows Phone,’ will explain the basics of device encryption and how you can activate it on your Windows Phone.

Encryption in general is basically a conundrum. It scrambles the contents of a file to be encrypted. In order to decrypt the file, an encryption key is required so that only authorized personnel can gain access to it. Modern encryption is complex with minimum vulnerabilities.

With technological advancements, the threat of data breaching has been greatly increased. This has put a major risk to one’s privacy and security hence it’s the sole reason why nowadays, many data and device encryption options have become attainable.

While discussing the major mobile operating devices from security point-of-view, Eugene Kaspersky, the CEO of Kaspersky Lab, declared Windows Phone as “So far very clean” suggesting that in terms of security, Windows Phone has surpassed iOS and Android.

In addition to security features, like Find My Phone and Windows Hello, on Windows 10 Mobile, it also has a feature named ‘Device Encryption.’ The Device encryption feature helps in encrypting the Windows Phone. This is entirely because Microsoft does not want to risk the privacy of its users to cyber criminals.

How To Enable Device Encryption In Windows 10 Phone

This encryption feature is disabled in Windows 10 Phone by default, but it can easily be enabled by following these two simple steps:

Once on Start screen, swipe left to come on All apps, open the Settings app and tap on System.

2. Tap on Device Encryption and make sure to slide the pill switch to the On mode in order to enable encryption feature in your Windows Phone.

In order to ascertain whether your device has been encrypted or not, you just need to double-check that in the Settings app, the Device encryption is turned on.

NOTE: Make sure that a password PIN is present in order to enable the Device encryption feature otherwise you will be reeled back to the Sign-in options to create a PIN. If this happens, then in the PIN section, you would just need to tap the Add option and follow the on-screen wizard to create a PIN. Now you can direct yourself to the Device encryption settings in Windows Phone and authenticate that the feature has been enabled.

A crucial point of advice is that the Device encryption feature is not responsible to encrypt the data that you store on an SD card thus it is strictly notified not to store any private data on a removable storage, as anyone can gain access to such data.

Moreover, you should be careful while setting up Device Encryption in Windows Phone, because it might be possible to face problems such as emails not synchronizing with your Windows Phone.