Seeking a secure way to work across two Macs
January 2, 2019 5:06 AM Subscribe
Looking for a way to work on confidential documents seamlessly and securely across two Macs (and any future computers I may have).
I work on confidential documents which, for my clients’ sake, I have to keep secure. I also need to be somewhat location-independent. I work on an iMac at the office and a Macbook Pro on the road and at home. I have previously used an encrypted .sparsebundle volume within Dropbox, mounted on whichever machine I’m using that day, then unmounted when I’ve finished, but after an instance when I lost some data to a corrupted sparsebundle (my own fault as I had it mounted in two places by mistake – please be kind to me, I know this was a terrible idea), I am no longer willing to do this.
Seeking ideas as to what I could do instead. I’m based in the UK, and I’m not too happy about storing the files unencrypted in Dropbox; although this would have the advantage of simplicity, I am not convinced it is secure enough (though I would be happy to be told I’m wrong). I currently have a "Dropbox Plus" personal account with 1TB of space, which is far more than I need. I’m a freelancer, so this is all my responsibility.
I work on confidential documents which, for my clients’ sake, I have to keep secure. I also need to be somewhat location-independent. I work on an iMac at the office and a Macbook Pro on the road and at home. I have previously used an encrypted .sparsebundle volume within Dropbox, mounted on whichever machine I’m using that day, then unmounted when I’ve finished, but after an instance when I lost some data to a corrupted sparsebundle (my own fault as I had it mounted in two places by mistake – please be kind to me, I know this was a terrible idea), I am no longer willing to do this.
Seeking ideas as to what I could do instead. I’m based in the UK, and I’m not too happy about storing the files unencrypted in Dropbox; although this would have the advantage of simplicity, I am not convinced it is secure enough (though I would be happy to be told I’m wrong). I currently have a "Dropbox Plus" personal account with 1TB of space, which is far more than I need. I’m a freelancer, so this is all my responsibility.
Best answer: Spideroak is kind of like Dropbox, but encrypted end to end (they can't see your files).
posted by dmd at 6:32 AM on January 2, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by dmd at 6:32 AM on January 2, 2019 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Yeah, the answer here is SpiderOak. It works just like Dropbox, except it's end-to-end secure. Nobody can see your files except you.
posted by uberchet at 7:42 AM on January 2, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by uberchet at 7:42 AM on January 2, 2019 [1 favorite]
Why not encrypt the files locally on your computers and upload only the encrypted blobs to Dropbox for syncing? Of course, extra care must be taken not to upload the unencrypted versions by mistake.
posted by Bangaioh at 12:57 PM on January 2, 2019
posted by Bangaioh at 12:57 PM on January 2, 2019
Best answer: Encfs pointed at your Dropbox folder is one way to do this and still take advantage of your 1 TB plan. It was good years ago when I had similar requirements. (Maybe not a good idea anymore.)
Looking at the state of things now, Cryptomator and Boxcryptor look like the best options for client side encryption with Dropbox.
posted by Anonymous Function at 3:03 PM on January 2, 2019
Looking at the state of things now, Cryptomator and Boxcryptor look like the best options for client side encryption with Dropbox.
posted by Anonymous Function at 3:03 PM on January 2, 2019
Response by poster: Thanks everyone. Bangaioh, good question, but local encryption of individual files would be quite cumbersome as there are a lot of files, some created on the fly when I process client files using my specialist software.
posted by altolinguistic at 3:46 AM on January 16, 2019
posted by altolinguistic at 3:46 AM on January 16, 2019
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by ZipRibbons at 5:20 AM on January 2, 2019