Have you ever used True Crypt?

[Scottish Business Owner]

I wonder if any of our members have ever used True Crypt ?

It's basically a free open source encryption tool that you can use to encrypt their data. I'm specifically trying to get anyone's experience of using True Crypt alongside Dropbox.

I always get nervous about installing something like this. They make it sound so easy to install but given what it does i'm just a bit reluctant to set it going without knowing a bit more about it.

Do you use it? Any hints or tips to set it up properly? Any bad experiences? Maybe even any other options I should be looking at?

Appreciate your feedback

 

[stugster]

We use True Crypt extensively for encrypting data, although I've never yet done it alongside Dropbox - I will have a play with this tonight.

We use TC in two ways:
1) To encrypt a folder.
2) To encrypt EVERYTHINGGGGGGGG

The folder encryption is great for servers where you only want to encrypt the really sensitive data, but the "encrypt eveerrryyythinggg" is the daddy.

In this mode, you encrypt the entire hard disk with the exception of the special TrueCrypt boot loader. That means that even the operating system files are encrypted too. It also means that, if the entire hard disk is encrypted, you don't have to keep remembering to store your data in the one special folder.

We actually set two laptops up last week with full hard drive encryption for one of our clients - the two laptops were going abroad with them at conferences. The laptops are worth very little, but the data could have been pretty sensitive. Now they don't need to worry at all if they accidentally lose it or it gets stolen.

The Information Commissioner's Office advise that under the Data Protection Act, sensitive personal client data on mobile devices like laptops should always be encrypted.

 

[Scottish Business Owner]

I think the True Crypt site makes me feel a bit nervous. It just makes it sound all top secret and serious when you talk about encrypting data.

There seems to be a lot of people advocating using it alongside Dropbox but it led me to ask more questions about where TrueCrypt should sit given that I access Dropbox from various different machines. Does that in effect cause an issue or is the approach that you should have TC on all of the machine. Understanding that part would be really useful. The last thing I want to do is encrypt and then make it difficult to access but if this turns out to be a relatively painless process that offers a great deal in terms of piece of mind regarding my data then I think it's worth exploring.

 

[stugster]

You'll almost certainly have to have truecrypt on all machines that want to access the data - without being able to decrypt it, you wont see the data at all.

The most appropriate thing to do would be to create a SECURE folder through truecrypt within DropBox and then encrypt it. You'll then just "mount" the folder from other drop box accounts.

I'll go play now

 

[stugster]

I may have found a solution to your DropBox and TrueCrypt conundrum.

SparkleShare is an open source piece of software which does the exact same thing as DropBox. However, there are two really nice differences that are swaying me to move over to it. These are:

1) An option to encrypt all the data going back and forward, but to additionally leave it encrypted on the main server

2) Instead of relying on DropBox to provide the storage space, you can deploy SparkleShare onto your own server. This means that you can get a lot more storage for less money and keep all the infrastructure within the business rather than outsourcing it to someone you've never met before!