by Christina DesMarais for Techlicious
A Safer Way to Store Files Online
I’m a big fan of cloud sync storage services and regularly use Dropbox, Google Drive and SkyDrive to store and share files. To keep my information safe, these services encrypt my files while they’re in transit from my computer to their servers many store these files unencrypted; so if hackers were to break in or get a hold of my password, they could read my information. And even those that use encryption on their servers can be compromised by a bad actor at the company who has access to the encryption keys.
Frankly, most of my files wouldn’t be of interest to hackers, but there are a few files I need to keep locked down–tax returns, business documents, etc. For these, I use software that encrypts the files on my computer before they’re sent to my cloud sync service.
There are a number of good, free options, including TrueCrypt, SecretSync and BoxCryptor. I’ve been using BoxCryptor because it supports Windows, Mac, Android and iOS and works it with Dropbox, as well as Google Drive and SkyDrive. And like the other encryption solutions, it’s easy to use.
This excerpt appears with the permission of Techlicious.
