How to Keep Things Secure in Your Dropbox or Other Cloud Storage

By Scott Jordan, Patty’s Pioneer

Thanks to Scott Jordan for this invaluable cloud storage tip (for Mac OS X users). You can find Scott’s tips and other users’ comments on his blog, Unvexed.blogspot.com, including tips for non-Mac users.

I'm a huge fan of Dropbox and other cloud services. It's just incredibly convenient to be able to access my stuff from all my machines.

But security and privacy remain problematic: If your stuff is stored on someone else's machine, who else can access it? The question has been in the news lately. Expect more such stories as adoption of cloud technologies accelerates.

Yet by far the largest risk to your data is loss from hardware failure, theft, or physical disaster. Aside from the convenience factor, storing things in your Dropbox means it's locally copied to all your machines as well as safely backed-up (and versioned!) in the cloud. For those reasons, I keep all my current work in my Dropbox. Securely!

Here's How:
I use Macs most often lately, and this tip leverages some truly keen capabilities of OS X. (I am unaware if Windows 7 offers similar functionality combined with similar ease and baked-in speed, but there are third-party tools like TrueCrypt which can attempt something kinda/sorta parallel, but not as easy or automagical, and not as swift in execution.)