(How-To) Encrypt Your Google Drive Files with Insync and Boxcryptor

Data security was recently put in the spotlight with the wave of WanaCry ransomware attacks which plagued individuals, organizations and businesses alike. Luckily we haven’t received any reports of affected Insync users (and Google’s security measures prove to be effective thus far), but we wanted to try an additional layer of security our users can adopt alongside the use of Insync: local file encryption via the service Boxcryptor.

Note: This guide is for Insync users. If you didn’t know already, Insync is a Google Drive client that works on Windows, Mac and Linux. Check us out.

What is Boxcryptor?

Boxcryptor is a third-party file encryption software that allows for easy integration with your cloud storage services and/or your local folders. They use end-to-end encryption standards AES-256 and RSA-4096.

In this case we’ll be using Boxcryptor to encrypt select files and folders from an Insync folder.

The Setup
  1. Create an account with Boxcryptor (there’s a free plan)
  2. Download and install the Boxcryptor software on your machine — Windows and macOS supported
  3. Boxcryptor creates a virtual folder in your machine where you can manage the encryption (more on this later):

  4. In Boxcryptor’s Preferences select add location (+):

  5. Select any location (folder) within your Insync folder with contents you intend to encrypt. We recommend creating a special folder in your Insync folder for this. In this test we named our folder "Boxcryptor - encrypted files":

  6. The added location will appear in the virtual folder. From here you can encrypt/decrypt your files via a right click menu:

How it works with Insync

  • Encrypted folders and files will open automatically on the machine running Boxcryptor
  • Encrypted files will sync to your Google Drive in a new encrypted format: .bc
  • Encrypted files (.bc) won’t open on drive.google.com.

i.e. If you encrypted a PDF file, you’ll need to decrypt it first to be able to open on drive.google.com

Hope this helps! Email support@insynchq.com for any questions.

Disclaimer: Boxcryptor is a third-party encryption service and is not affiliated with Insync. We just discovered that it can be used with Insync :)