Dropbox is bringing end-to-end encryption for business users

Dropbox is bringing end-to-end encryption for business users, and is buying a firm’s assets to make it happen.

In a blog post (opens in new tab) published earlier this week on the company website, Dropbox said it signed an agreement to acquire “several key assets” from Boxcryptor, a company that provides end-to-end “zero-knowledge” encryption for cloud backup services. 

Apparently, the combination of these two companies will help Dropbox better meet its customers’ needs, including better cloud storage security in the post-Covid world.

Dropbox’s Boxcryptor acquisition

“We’ve heard from our customers that encrypted file storage is increasingly valuable to them and their teams, and there’s heightened demand for built-in functionality and features to support this in the Dropbox experience,” the blog post reads.

Dropbox’s plan is to embed Boxcryptor’s capabilities natively within Dropbox for its business users on its paid plans, adding an additional layer of security by encrypting files locally on the devices, before being synchronized with the Dropbox folders.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed, so we don’t know how much money Dropbox had to shell out for Boxcryptor’s assets, nor which assets precisely those might be. 

Boxcryptor was founded in 2011, and works on protecting people’s data stored in cloud services such as OneDrive, Google Drive, SharePoint and – you guessed it – Dropbox. The company was already one of Boxcryptor’s “premier partners”, TechCrunch (opens in new tab) reports.

Dropbox and Boxcryptor were both careful with their chosen words in the announcement. While Dropbox said it was acquiring “several key assets”, suggesting this isn’t a full-blown acquisition, Boxcryptor said its “new mission” was to embed its tech into Dropbox. 

The media speculate the wording was meant to calm the spirits at Boxcryptor, as the company still has obligations towards its existing customers. 

As such, it will continue supporting them for as long as the contracts are valid, and will keep the keys, contracts, and data, safely in its own hands, and not in Dropbox’s.