Serious Discussion Advice on security and accessibility for Family's OneDrive data

[IoSonoPiero]

Hello everyone,

I seek advice on securely managing my personal and family data in the cloud. I use the "Microsoft 365 Family" plan, which provides 6 OneDrive accounts, each with 1TB of space. These accounts contain private photos and documents and are synced with a QNAP NAS using an encrypted filesystem.

My concern is that although the data on the NAS is secure, the data on OneDrive is not encrypted. I considered using Cryptomator to encrypt the data before uploading it to the cloud. However, this introduces a significant problem: accessibility. The various devices in my family (PCs, tablets, smartphones) access these data via the OneDrive app. With the data encrypted in the cloud, it becomes impossible to quickly access photos and documents without first decrypting them with Cryptomator.

I am very concerned about the security of my data, but at the same time, I cannot ask my family to use decryption tools every time they need quick access to a file in the cloud.

I am seeking advice on balancing data security with ease of access in a family context. Does anyone have experiences or solutions to suggest?

Thank you in advance for your help!

 

[ForgottenSeer 103564]

Hello everyone,

I seek advice on securely managing my personal and family data in the cloud. I use the "Microsoft 365 Family" plan, which provides 6 OneDrive accounts, each with 1TB of space. These accounts contain private photos and documents and are synced with a QNAP NAS using an encrypted filesystem.

My concern is that although the data on the NAS is secure, the data on OneDrive is not encrypted. I considered using Cryptomator to encrypt the data before uploading it to the cloud. However, this introduces a significant problem: accessibility. The various devices in my family (PCs, tablets, smartphones) access these data via the OneDrive app. With the data encrypted in the cloud, it becomes impossible to quickly access photos and documents without first decrypting them with Cryptomator.

I am very concerned about the security of my data, but at the same time, I cannot ask my family to use decryption tools every time they need quick access to a file in the cloud.

I am seeking advice on balancing data security with ease of access in a family context. Does anyone have experiences or solutions to suggest?

Thank you in advance for your help!

External storage is the best method, a couple of them "copies". Grab yourself a couple 4TB external drives that can be plugged in any time to access items, especially easy if you keep it organized with folders ect.

Keep duplicate copies on each drive "hardware failure happens" Not only does this negate the possibility that the server you are trusting may get hit, or worse yet suffer hardware failure. This keeps it offline and secure, but mostly, and best part, it keeps your system, light, lean and if it gets hit, nothing gets lost, and the hardware thing again of course. Its your family, nothing but the best when it comes to security, do not rely on the cloud for this, take those matters into your own hands.

Same with passwords and managing, keypass portable on multiple flash drives will certainly protect those passwords and help you and your family manage them.

 

[IoSonoPiero]

I have a two-disk QNAP TS251D, so I already have this, using RAID 1.
Then, like I'm a bit paranoid, I make backups of the NAS on an external HDD.

So, I have all the data on OneDrive and QNAP, and every PC with an associated OneDrive account is backed up daily.
Every PC is encrypted with Bitlocker. Mine has a LUKS encrypted drive.

My "problem" is related to the cloud: every data is "in clear" in the cloud.
My NAS has a function to encrypt data BEFORE sending them to the cloud, but in this case, I'll have issues on my devices accessing unencrypted data.

I don't know if I was clear to explain myself.

 

[ForgottenSeer 103564]

I have a two-disk QNAP TS251D, so I already have this, using RAID 1.
Then, like I'm a bit paranoid, I make backups of the NAS on an external HDD.

So, I have all the data on OneDrive and QNAP, and every PC with an associated OneDrive account is backed up daily.
Every PC is encrypted with Bitlocker. Mine has a LUKS encrypted drive.

My "problem" is related to the cloud: every data is "in clear" in the cloud.
My NAS has a function to encrypt data BEFORE sending them to the cloud, but in this case, I'll have issues on my devices accessing unencrypted data.

I don't know if I was clear to explain myself.

Yes quite clear, my suggestion was to not use the cloud for personal and family data. The cloud is a giant juicy target of information if you want to protect your and your families Private information and doings, your best bet is to not store it there period but externally. There is no guarantees leaving it in someone else's hands.

 

[IoSonoPiero]

You are right.
I dream of using my NAS to access all my data using something like OwnCloud (and similar) via the Internet.
The NAS is encrypted. And the backup to the cloud will be encrypted, too, so logging into OneDrive will give me only gibberish.

I don't know how difficult it is to achieve that.

Note: Currently, I'm using OneDrive because I have six different accounts with 1TB of data for less than 99€ (with reasonable offers, I pay 50€ / year).

 

[ForgottenSeer 103564]

You are right.
I dream of using my NAS to access all my data using something like OwnCloud (and similar) via the Internet.
The NAS is encrypted. And the backup to the cloud will be encrypted, too, so logging into OneDrive will give me only gibberish.

I don't know how difficult it is to achieve that.

Note: Currently, I'm using OneDrive because I have six different accounts with 1TB of data for less than 99€ (with reasonable offers, I pay 50€ / year).

if a hacker manages to obtain the encryption key or crack the encryption algorithm, the information is no longer secure. If the information is not there to obtain in the first place, it is very secure. External storage is stronger than encrypted storage simply because of access.

 

[IoSonoPiero]

Avoiding the cloud is the only solution, then.
I'll have a lot of availability issues using only offline resources.

However, thanks for your point of view!

 

[ForgottenSeer 103564]

Avoiding the cloud is the only solution, then.
I'll have a lot of availability issues using only offline resources.

However, thanks for your point of view!

It's a slight inconvenience to gain ultimate security. Plug the device into the system when needed to grab items. As time goes and more breaches occur you will be grateful your information is safe and secure.