Times have changed and most of us tend to have our data these days on cloud storage services like Dropbox. Not that they aren’t safe, but, stories of people hacking in to such services or data being compromised due to security vulnerabilities have come to light in the past. Today we will see how we can easily encrypt the data we store on our Dropbox account to ensure additional safety. We will use a nifty tool called BoxCryptor to encrypt our files in Dropbox. So let’s start!
Setting up BoxCryptor
Before we start encrypting files we need to setup BoxCryptor. Step 1: Download and install BoxCryptor on your computer. The installation is pretty simple and does not take much time to complete. Step 2: Launch BoxCryptor after successful installation. If Dropbox is installed on your system the tool will detect it automatically and create a folder inside it named BoxCryptor. As the tool also creates a virtual drive in your system you will need to specify a drive letter for the same. Step 3: In the next step you will have to provide a password which will be used to encrypt and decrypt data. Finally click on ok to finish the setup.
Encrypting the files
Encrypting files is a piece of cake with BoxCryptor, just copy all the files you want to encrypt to the newly created drive. As the encryption takes place in real time you will not see any progress bar for the same. Once you have copied all the files to the drive exit BoxCrypt using the program icon in taskbar which will automatically close the virtual drive and thus encrypt your data. If you have a look inside the folders created by BoxCryptor at the time of installation you will see some randomly named files. These are the file you have just encrypted.
Decrypting the files
Just run the program again and provide the password you had set. The virtual drive will open automatically with all your files decrypted on the fly.
Some Points to Note
Never use the option Remember Password while using the above application. If you do so there is a high risk that your data may be compromised.After you installed the application you will see an XML file in the folder you have created. Please don’t delete this file.BoxCryptor may detect your Dropbox folder by default but you can change the default settings to use it with any folder.The free version comes with a limit of 2GB. You can purchase the application to get unlimited access.
My Verdict
The first thing that impressed me about the application was the real-time encryption. Unlike other software, one need not wait for hours or minutes for the file to get encrypted or decrypted. So if you are looking for an easy way to encrypt your data on the clouds or even locally, BoxCryptor is not a bad choice. If you know of any other such tools, let us know in the comments.
