Popular Encrypted Cloud Storage Providers For Personal Use

Cloud services are popular tools of online data storage and are available in plenty for little or nothing. However they also pose a serious worry. How secure are they and how many of them are snooping on your data? Privacy in the online world is a tough one to come by, with most social accounts banding out their users personal data to all and sundry at the tap of a button.  If you hold business documents, banking data, tax information or even private letters, there is always the imminent danger that they could be hacked or stolen. If you are someone who respects and values your privacy, you will want to make sure that the cloud storage service that you are choosing to store your files, documents, music and more are safe and secure. And one of the best ways to ensure this is to check if they offer encryption services. In this post, we take a look at the top encrypted cloud storage providers you can consider for your personal use.

Dropbox, Google Drive and Amazon Cloud Services are big names in the cloud storage business but they don’t promise fully secure encryption services for their users and their privacy policies clearly mention that should they be required by law to turn over your data, they would do so. Microsoft’s OneDrive services have had some bad publicity due to their unacceptable scanning of private information and closing down accounts which they deemed inappropriate. Apple also reserves the right to scan your iCloud files for malicious or illegal content.

The encrypted cloud storage providers mentioned below will also oblige the law but since the data is encrypted they have no means of reading content, determining who it belongs to or decrypting it. So even if they do turn over data it will be in a completely unreadable form and useless to anyone who sees it.

5 Encrypted Cloud Storage Providers (Personal use)

SpiderOak

SpiderOak has a Zero-Knowledge’ Privacy policy that promises that its servers never know the plaintext contents of the data it is storing and is therefore safe from being compromised by internal threats or external hackers.

Its end to end data encryption ensures that the files are not just encrypted locally on your computer before being uploaded to their servers, it also ensures that any changes made to the files from your PC are synced with the local decrypted versions and  secured before upload.

SpiderOak also ensures that passwords used to secure your data are never stored online, only on your local computer so only you have control over your data. However, should you lose your password, the service will not be able to retrieve it for you or decrypt the data for you.

Another great benefit with SpiderOak are its iOS and Android apps that let you access your encrypted files even while on the go. It features password protected ShareRooms where you can access your information directly from your mobile device. In this case the encryption and decryption happens locally but SpiderOak stores your password on its servers in encrypted memory for authentication purposes. This password is destroyed when you complete your remote session so you are still secure.

SpiderOak’s new clients get 3072-bit RSA combined with 256 bit AES encryption services for their files.

This encrypted cloud storage solution is free for personal use for up to 2GB. You can find out more details on the SpiderOak Website.

Wuala

Wuala is another great cloud storage provider that offers a secure cloud solution for your data. Wuala encrypts your data on your computer before you upload it. During upload, your data is split up into many bits and is stored in multiple places. That way no one will ever know which data belongs to whom. Another added security feature is that your password is never transferred keeping your stuff away from prying eyes and making them truly private. Just remember that the price for this is that should you lose your password, your data will also stay out of your reach.

Apart from these great security features, Wuala offers automatic backups, file versioning, sync across multiple platforms, sharing and collaboration. Wuala also has Android and iOS apps for accessing your data securely on the go. File encryption happens directly on your phone or tablet and your password is never transmitted. Wuala uses AES- 256 for encryption, RSA 2048 for signatures and for key exchange when sharing folders, and SHA-256 for integrity checks.

Wuala’s personal plan starts at 5GB for free and there’s a promotion until the end of the month to double your storage if you plan on a yearly purchase.

You can find more details about the promotion and security features on their website.

Tresorit

Tresorit’s AES-256 enabled client-side encryption technology promises to offer maximum protection against the many data security threats that exist in the cloud today. It lets you secure your folders and access the encrypted content from anywhere with their Android and iOS mobile apps. Its zero-knowledge privacy ensures that not even its own staff can’t see your data. During upload, when the data is under risk of manipulation, Tresorit secures the file transfer with TLS. It also uses a complex system of verifying the identity of users who share encrypted files called the ICE protocol. Its personal plan offers up to 5 GB for free.

You can learn more about Tresoit on their website.

TeamDrive

TeamDrive, the company that has received the Data Protection Seal of Privacy of the Independent Regional Centre for Data Protection of Schleswig-Holstein offeres 256 bit AES end-to-end encryption for your data on the cloud. On installation, TeamDrive generates a public-private key pair, which are used for the secure transfer of TeamDrive invitations. The public key is stored on a central server managed by TeamDrive.

Files on your computer are encrypted using the AES-256 algorithm before they are uploaded and a symmetric AES-256 key is produced for each folder. When a new group member is invited for sharing or collaboration, the symmetric key of the folder is encrypted with the public key of the new member and dispatched. Also, the access data for the disk space on the TeamDrive server is encrypted and sent. The group member will have to decode the symmetric key using the private key and join the folder. This ensures that only authorized members access the data.

The free version of TeamDrive comes with free 2 GB of free web space.

You can get more details about TeamDrive on their official site.

iDrive

iDrive encrypts your data with 256-bit AES algorithm both while transferring as well on storage. You can also create a private key during signup to set your privacy levels. Like all good encryption providers, IDrive does not store your private encryption key on the servers, so should you forget it, you will not be able to decrypt your data. It also offers a complementary local backup solution for quick data restoration that comes with military-grade encryption. iDrive also offers a string of other great features such as mobile backups, online sync, remote manage and Facebook backup.

iDrive offers 5GB of free space with its personal plan.

You can learn more about iDrive on its official website.

We;ve covered some of the popular cloud storage services offering secure services. Popular Encrypted Cloud Storage Providers For Personal UseIf you know of other encrypted cloud storage providers that can be added to this list, please share them with us.