Bitlocker and Dropbox

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Im looking to enable bitlocker on my laptop. I Use my laptop for work and I have it connected to a company shared dropbox folder. As there is sensitive data in this dropbox older, Id like to enable bitlocker to secure my local copies of these files.

My question here is, will this encrypt the cloud stored copies of the files? Im concerned about accidentally locking everyone else out of the files in the cloud stored dropbox if I use bitlocker to encrypt the local copies as dropbox syncs everything.

Christopher Stayner

Posted 2015-03-14T17:29:29.260

Reputation: 31

If you encrypt the entire drive, yes, what you upload will be encrypted – Ramhound – 2015-03-14T17:50:25.873

4@Ramhound I don't think that is true. Bitlocker is full-disk encryption, that means it encrypts at low level (sectors). While Dropbox synchronizes at file level. It just reads data from files (even if they are encrypted physically on disk), just like any other application. So (unencrypted) content of files will be synced to cloud. – ge0rdi – 2015-03-14T18:36:59.310

1@ge0rdi - Easy enough to get around. Mount and encrypt a .VHD and sync that to Dropbox. – Ramhound – 2015-03-14T22:37:33.923

Answers

5

@ge0rdi's comment is correct -- the files are decrypted before Dropbox sees them, so Dropbox uploads only the decrypted files and no one else sharing the files will be affected.

Here's another reference on Microsoft's website: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-files/bitlocker-w-dropbox-box-and-outlook/9b82fe7b-9766-4d88-b377-61f1963e0f6d

robyoder

Posted 2015-03-14T17:29:29.260

Reputation: 171

Asked: 2015-03-14T17:29:29.260

Viewed: 3 237 times

Active: 2015-03-19T04:51:52.963