Comments on: Dropbox Review

By: Caroline

Caroline — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:19:25 +0000

I’m looking at runing Dropbox for Teams for my company – we have around 50GB data and about 10 users who work from home.
I have some concerns about the initial setup, which I hope someone can help me with. Key to this is that the monthly data cap for residential broadband accounts here is usually 40GB or so – and that’s the environment that my people are working in.
I can manage the initial 50GB upload of the file from my office through purchasing extra bandwidth, but when I share/ sync those files with my people, do all the files then download onto their computers (and chew through all of their monthly bandwidth capacity)? Or is it possible with Dropbox to work ‘in the cloud’ and not actually download all the files to their desktops?

My other query is on my ability, if someone stops working for me, to delete all the company dropbox files from their desktop. I’d like to be able to do this for ongoing security, but if those files are on thier desktop do I have control of this?

Hope you can help a non pointy-head!
Cheers

By: Mark Shead

Mark Shead — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 04:05:45 +0000

@Tara – If you aren’t running into any limitations, I’d say stay with what you have. The only issue I see with your current setup is that you need to make sure you have an understand a backup strategy incase one of your people on the road (or anyone else) accidentally deletes something. Dropbox for teams seems like it is designed when you have much more complicated permission and sharing needs. So Bob needs to share a document with Sue and Jane, but only Jane can edit it, etc.

By: Tara Doran

Tara Doran — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 18:27:17 +0000

We have been using Dropbox for our company for the past year. We mostly use it for word and excel docs providing info for people on the road. The 25 on the road mostly just read files and get info using drop box; 10 of us in the office add docs and update them as needed to provide that info to the people on the road.
We are considering buying Dropbox for Teams when it comes out in Jan; but I am hesitant to spend that much money if we are just better off staying on the current Dropbox. Do you see and advantage to signing up for Dropbox Teams?

By: Mark Shead

Mark Shead — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:36:30 +0000

What type of files are you wanting to share? I think it could work well for somethings particularly where only a few people are writing to the file and most people are just reading, but it might be difficult if you have 40 people all trying to write to the same file frequently.

By: Tara Doran

Tara Doran — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 22:11:48 +0000

Does anyone have a review pro/cons about Dropbox for teams? Are there any other alternatives for a company of around 40 people who are on the road?

By: Mark Shead

Mark Shead — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 03:10:06 +0000

You can always encrypt the files that you store on Dropbox. Some people are using TrueCrypt to encrypt files on Dropbox, so that might be an option.

Dropbox has talked about allowing you to use your own keys for encryption. If that was implemented in a way where the keys were only in the client, it might do what you want. If thats a feature you’d like to see I’d email Dropbox and ask for it.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 20:49:42 +0000

Any follow up on this? It seems to me that this would be a drawback of ANY cloud based backup/sync system. Who would want to see sensitive employee data such as Social Security Numbers and compensation figures compromised by an attack on Dropbox’ servers? Certainly no business could bear that risk, could they?

By: Anna

Anna — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:24:19 +0000

No Problem Mark. I’m an avid user of Dropbox and it’s been a huge help since I had to recently replace my laptop. Anything to let people know its out there. :)

By: Mark Shead

Mark Shead — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:16:24 +0000

Anna – Thanks for pointing that out. I have added it to this article as well–I’m not sure how I overlooked telling about the pricing! :)

By: Anna

Anna — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:24:52 +0000

Vernon,

Though it was not mentioned in the original article, Dropbox is also a free service. You can purchase more space, but you can also “earn” more space by inviting friends to use the program.

For a student or a recreational user, Dropbox is perfect for saving backups of documents that are important to people, but that they don’t use all the time.

By: Mark Shead

Mark Shead — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:58:34 +0000

On passwords used for verifying a user’s identity, you are correct. However to decrypt a file and serve it back through a web page, the server will have to have the decryption key in memory. The only way around that would be to server the file back in its encrypted state and let client side software handle the decryption process–something that presents a barrier for the average user.

By: discordian

discordian — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:31:50 +0000

Just FYI, server does not need to store your password in order to confirm it is correct. Not on the disk, neither in memory. Doing otherwise is just stupid as intrepid hackers could steal lists of passwords for their nefarious uses.

By: peteyb

peteyb — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:32:06 +0000

thanks. i would be interested in finding out the results of your investigation.

By: Mark Shead

Mark Shead — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:02:44 +0000

Good to know. However, if their server never knew anything about your password, I’m not sure how they could offer the ability to download files from the web without having something installed on that computer to decrypt them. Maybe it just holds your password in memory temporarily while the web session is open and then removes it. I’ll have to check this out in more detail. Thanks for the link.

By: peteyb

peteyb — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:19:58 +0000

i thought dropbox did offer encryption and here’s some info from their site:

“All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES-256) and are inaccessible without your account password”

https://www.dropbox.com/help/27