In effect, you’re trusting the company not to use that power for its own purposes, or to let a third-party do so (for example, it’s entirely possible for the government to subpoena data from the cloud). When you use a cloud storage service without zero-knowledge encryption, the company holds the keys needed to access your encrypted files. Fewer opportunities to leak equals fewer leaks altogether. We tend to recommend zero-knowledge cloud services because data security often comes down to simplicity. Why Does Zero-Knowledge Encryption Matter? Buying Boxcryptor may save Dropbox some development time, but it’s uncertain whether it will slow down customers when they sync or share files. All encryption comes with a speed cost (that’s why virtual private networks slow down your internet). One thing that’s not clear is exactly how Dropbox will integrate Boxcryptor’s assets into its service. Now that Boxcryptor is part of Dropbox, new users can only subscribe through Dropbox. Before, users could independently encrypt their files with Boxcryptor and shop around for cloud storage. That is, at least it could have done that. This also means you’ll miss out on the brisk speeds of block-level sync, but if you like Dropbox for its interface, pricing and features, Boxcryptor can offer you peace of mind.īoxcryptor’s stand-alone app, pictured here, is no longer available to users following its acquisition by Dropbox. If you encrypt your files before uploading them to the cloud, Dropbox can’t read them. As you can read in our Boxcryptor review, we really like the service it provides. It’s a zero-knowledge service that lets you encrypt your Dropbox files (and works with over 30 other cloud storage platforms, including Google Drive and OneDrive). Can Boxcryptor Encrypt Dropbox?īoxcryptor is one of the few companies that provides end-to-end encryption software directly to consumers. With the acquisition of Boxcryptor, that might change. That makes Dropbox more convenient, but less secure. It also boosts speeds by forgoing zero-knowledge encryption, keeping a copy of every user’s encryption key for faster access. However, block-level copying isn’t the only thing that makes Dropbox one of the fastest cloud storage options. “Block-level” means that Dropbox servers only sync the parts of the file that changed, as opposed to “file-level” copying, which syncs the entire file every time (the practice used by Box, Google Drive and others). One of Dropbox’s key selling points is its speed, partly enabled by its use of block-level copying to sync files between devices and the cloud. However, will Boxcryptor really add zero-knowledge encryption to Dropbox? When and how will it be implemented, and what does this mean for current Dropbox and Boxcryptor customers? This article shares everything we know so far.ĭropbox is both a desktop app (pictured above on Windows) and a website. It’ll address Dropbox security issues while putting users’ minds at ease. Dropbox says it’s acquiring assets from Boxcryptor that will finally let it provide true “zero-knowledge” encryption (though only for business users) that is, nobody but the user has all the keys needed to decrypt their data, rendering Dropbox secure.Īcquiring Boxcryptor is a solid move on paper. The Boxcryptor acquisition is meant to remove that possibility. There’s no evidence that it did so, but the potential was there. However, until recently, that encryption only applied to third parties - Dropbox held the necessary keys to view files stored on customer drives. We don’t yet know what zero-knowledge encryption will look like in Dropbox, but it appears it will only be available on Dropbox Business.Īs we wrote in our Dropbox review, Dropbox already encrypts files with the industry-standard AES-256 cipher.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |