The simplicity of DropBox and similar cloud based file storage makes it very attractive to many people. Engineers are not an exclusion from the list. The discussion about “Dropbox and PLM” is on going already long time. I posted about some interesting dropbox usage patterns few weeks ago here. As you can read from the article, engineers are placing files to the Dropbox. The problem of security is clearly identified these days. So, to see a startup trying to solve this problem should not surprised you much. That’s what I felt when my attention was caught by BoxCryptor for Dropbox. Still in alpha version, but promising … Here is how BoxCryptor CEO Andrea Wittek explains what they do:
According to BoxCryptor CEO Andrea Wittek, the benefit of that would become apparent if you happen to want to download and decrypt something using someone else’s machine. I can also see the feature coming in handy for Chrome OS business users, down the line at least. “We call it an alpha version,” Wittek told me. “We’ve been testing it for a while. We definitely recommend people try it, though we wouldn’t recommend it for very sensitive files. It can crash – the worst thing that can happen is you think it’s encrypted a file and it hasn’t.”
Watch the following video demo how BoxCryptor works.
What is my conclusion? Security is number #1 concern to adopt many cloud-based solutions. At the same time, you cannot stop new technologies. Access is one of the big advantages of the cloud. I can expect more companies will try to crack cloud-security problem and find innovative ways to share files in secured manner. The prize is huge – seamless access of files plus simplicity of Dropbox. For engineers, BoxCryptor can be a very attractive solution to share files with suppliers and remotely located design partners. This is only partial list. I’m sure you will come with more use cases. I’d be glad to read more about your experience with Dropbox file sharing.
Best, Oleg
Image courtesy of [Renjith Krishnan] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
