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Forum Discussion
jamminontoast
Jan 18, 2018Aspirant
Encryption of shared folders for users (?) - is this possible?
Hi, i have an RN316 - for home use currently. i've search in the community and have seen a few posts on people requesting about encryption however have found very little to suggest encryption is eve...
- Jan 19, 2018
Whole drive encryption won't do what you want, because the system will decrypt the files on the drive before sending them over the network.
If part of the idea is to automatically sync the dropbox to an encrypted folder on the NAS, then there are some caveats. I believe the NAS can only sync to a single dropbox account. Also, the methods suggested above all require the encryption to be done on the client PC. It can't be done by dropbox or the NAS itself, since neither would know the encryption key. If the NAS did know the encryption key, then the administrator could access the data.
An alternative is to just tell everyone that anything they want to keep truly private needs to be stored in an encrypted zip file, using the password of their choice. That also protects the files from dropbox hackers. Other files that aren't sensitive could be stored in the usual way.
jamminontoast
Jan 19, 2018Aspirant
Thanks StephenB and Marc_V for the suggestions.
To be clear, i am a very very novice user of the NAS, the minimum requirement is just to
(1) scramble or even hide the data away from a NAS admin/ root user (like myself) so I can't easily read it.
(2) easy to use - possibly via password at best for entry. (no tokens)
Why? I have 5 siblings who each have dropbox paid accounts, siblings or not, we don't necessarily want to share all our financials and key documents to each other. (Hence the level of privacy - not even an admin like myself of the NAS - should be able to access). And also potential cost savings right there.
> As Stephen mentioned, I would assume any encryption/ decryption at the host and target would take a hit in performance especially for the partition/ drive.
> i'll take a look at Veracrypt to see if this is a workable solution as it seems to encrypt an entire drive/ or partition - may look to see other solutions which allows just single folder scrambling/ encryption.
I looked earlier at Espionage app, however initial googling suggest it doesn't actually secure the vault on the NAS - only meant to be for the originating computer.
The other option i've found was through Cryptomator (donate-ware) which seems to scramble/ encrypt the files from view. I will continue to find something a little more 'mainstream' in case of 'restore' issues. Can't comment on the encryption method of their vault. If a hacker wants to hack into the system i am sure they will find a way, at least try to make them jump over a little hurdle... doest need to be a trump-like wall ;)
OR have i incorrectly explained what i wanted and the original ask - tooks us down the wrong route (with what people generally think of enterprise grade type encryption/ whole drive encryptions etc)?
StephenB
Jan 19, 2018Guru - Experienced User
Whole drive encryption won't do what you want, because the system will decrypt the files on the drive before sending them over the network.
If part of the idea is to automatically sync the dropbox to an encrypted folder on the NAS, then there are some caveats. I believe the NAS can only sync to a single dropbox account. Also, the methods suggested above all require the encryption to be done on the client PC. It can't be done by dropbox or the NAS itself, since neither would know the encryption key. If the NAS did know the encryption key, then the administrator could access the data.
An alternative is to just tell everyone that anything they want to keep truly private needs to be stored in an encrypted zip file, using the password of their choice. That also protects the files from dropbox hackers. Other files that aren't sensitive could be stored in the usual way.
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