Dropbox has a great potential for cloud storage and collaborative work speed up. With it, people can work together, share files and simultaneously complete tasks on any project.
Dropbox uses a business model called Freemium, which is popular among online software services for expanding a business. In this company offers a free service to their customer to lure them in and later on offer some additional cool features only for paid members.
Hackers have recently worked with methods to illegally copy user credentials used on one site to access them on other sites. Most of the time people use universal email and password to access their accounts easily. This could be very dangerous for your enterprises and business accounts.
It is recently seen that user's account data was stolen from the site where his Dropbox was attached and gained access to the encrypted files.
If you’re using Dropbox, there are a variety of ways you can secure your account against unauthorized access and protect your files even if someone finds access to your account.
Below are some full proof methods using which personal and corporate Dropbox accounts can be used with ensuring maximum security and no loopholes.
Enable Two-Step Verification
Dropbox supports two-step verification which is also known as two-factor authentication. For this, a user needs to enter two passwords and a security code received on the mobile phone. Whenever you add a new device or log-in from a different location, your account will stay secured with these two passwords and again with a time sensitive code received on mobile.
Go to Dropbox > Security > Two-step verification.
You can also get this codes by apps such as Google Authenticator. You will also get 16 digit emergency backup code in case you fail to receive the regular code. Just keep it at a safe place.
Unlinking devices which are not in use anymore is a good idea to wipe out stranger suspects. Through a history of web sessions, you can actually see who, where and for how much time someone had access to your Dropbox.
Be Smart while Sharing files
Most of the time people are lazy. They don't consider the risk they are playing while transferring important files to their Dropbox account. Employees and individuals must ensure to encrypt the files and also take backup of their data which is being uploaded. Personal emails and FTP servers are better options to store valuable documents.
Manage Linked Apps
In My apps tab, you can see which apps have granted access to your Dropbox Account. Once you spot a suspicious access, immediately stop it and delete its presence. It is similar to unlinking devices.
Use Email Notifications
You can surely set up an email notification when new app or device links to your Dropbox account. Within seconds you can protect your account once a security email pops up on your mobile.
You may also like "Worried about your online privacy? - follow these simple tips"
Have you heard of DropSmack?
Dropbox can be used as a medium to target corporate networks through malware and viruses & to attack multiple machines at once. Then it can smuggle sensitive data to exploited remote machines.
Someone can easily embed a DropSmack (kind of a programmable malware) in a file which is already in the Dropbox storage. Then they can load the same file on a synced computer in the network and wait till victim access it to trigger a malware operation to steal data.
It has a .doc extension and designed to trace Dropbox activities. Jake, a networking professional was hired by TechRepublic web owners to do a brief study on how DropSmack can harm corporate Dropbox accounts and results were eye-popping.
Encrypt Your Dropbox Files
All above tips may fail if someone gets access to your device or computer with Dropbox installed and open. Worst part could be as someone deleting your data entirely. For this, you can encrypt all the files and have a master encryption password. No one will be able to alter those files without a master password.
Even Dropbox has no solution for such files encryption, but you can surely do it manually.
Create a TrueCrypt Volume and store in your Dropbox account.
Use BoxCryptor - A user-friendly Mobile app.
On Linux - You can use EncFS to do encryption.
Tackle Viruses and Malware using the Third party Antivirus Tools
One of the worst examples is Ransomware malware. Ransomware is a type of a malware that encrypts files and makes them inaccessible to users. Hackers then collect such files to access user content.
Newly published data at Black Hat conference in Las Vegas says "now hackers don't even need your password to access your Dropbox account". It is dangerous for most of the cloud-based services including G drive.
Dropbox does not provide any antivirus scanning for the files which are to sync within. So if you want to stay 100% sure about your account data, make sure all machines have a good antivirus installed. Any top level tool such as Norton, Nod32 will solve the purpose.
man-in-the-cloud, this is a type of malware in which virus gets user's Dropbox access without his password. Once infected, it will look for the password token, a small file every device keeps for user's convenience. Once this token is obtained, later on, used to fool other machines to gain account access.
There is another malware named 'Hammertoss' which works by sitting between the network traffic and looking for ways to read files and docs.
People are also facing various issues such as bad CPU usage, sync again etc. after removing viruses from their Dropbox scanned through an antivirus tool. To avoid this, install antivirus tools right at the beginning of installing other applications on your machines. For more head to wikipost forum discussion.
Finally, Change Password Regularly
There are many incidents with major sites such as database leaks and malware attacks through hackers. Make sure not to use passwords repeatedly and same on various accounts. Keep a unique password and change it after a certain time.
Have comments? please share here in comments.
Dropbox uses a business model called Freemium, which is popular among online software services for expanding a business. In this company offers a free service to their customer to lure them in and later on offer some additional cool features only for paid members.
Hackers have recently worked with methods to illegally copy user credentials used on one site to access them on other sites. Most of the time people use universal email and password to access their accounts easily. This could be very dangerous for your enterprises and business accounts.
It is recently seen that user's account data was stolen from the site where his Dropbox was attached and gained access to the encrypted files.
If you’re using Dropbox, there are a variety of ways you can secure your account against unauthorized access and protect your files even if someone finds access to your account.
Enable Two-Step Verification
Dropbox supports two-step verification which is also known as two-factor authentication. For this, a user needs to enter two passwords and a security code received on the mobile phone. Whenever you add a new device or log-in from a different location, your account will stay secured with these two passwords and again with a time sensitive code received on mobile.
Go to Dropbox > Security > Two-step verification.
You can also get this codes by apps such as Google Authenticator. You will also get 16 digit emergency backup code in case you fail to receive the regular code. Just keep it at a safe place.
Unlinking devices which are not in use anymore is a good idea to wipe out stranger suspects. Through a history of web sessions, you can actually see who, where and for how much time someone had access to your Dropbox.
Be Smart while Sharing files
Most of the time people are lazy. They don't consider the risk they are playing while transferring important files to their Dropbox account. Employees and individuals must ensure to encrypt the files and also take backup of their data which is being uploaded. Personal emails and FTP servers are better options to store valuable documents.
Manage Linked Apps
In My apps tab, you can see which apps have granted access to your Dropbox Account. Once you spot a suspicious access, immediately stop it and delete its presence. It is similar to unlinking devices.
Use Email Notifications
You can surely set up an email notification when new app or device links to your Dropbox account. Within seconds you can protect your account once a security email pops up on your mobile.
You may also like "Worried about your online privacy? - follow these simple tips"
Have you heard of DropSmack?
Dropbox can be used as a medium to target corporate networks through malware and viruses & to attack multiple machines at once. Then it can smuggle sensitive data to exploited remote machines.
Someone can easily embed a DropSmack (kind of a programmable malware) in a file which is already in the Dropbox storage. Then they can load the same file on a synced computer in the network and wait till victim access it to trigger a malware operation to steal data.
It has a .doc extension and designed to trace Dropbox activities. Jake, a networking professional was hired by TechRepublic web owners to do a brief study on how DropSmack can harm corporate Dropbox accounts and results were eye-popping.
Encrypt Your Dropbox Files
All above tips may fail if someone gets access to your device or computer with Dropbox installed and open. Worst part could be as someone deleting your data entirely. For this, you can encrypt all the files and have a master encryption password. No one will be able to alter those files without a master password.
Even Dropbox has no solution for such files encryption, but you can surely do it manually.
Create a TrueCrypt Volume and store in your Dropbox account.
Use BoxCryptor - A user-friendly Mobile app.
On Linux - You can use EncFS to do encryption.
Tackle Viruses and Malware using the Third party Antivirus Tools
One of the worst examples is Ransomware malware. Ransomware is a type of a malware that encrypts files and makes them inaccessible to users. Hackers then collect such files to access user content.
Newly published data at Black Hat conference in Las Vegas says "now hackers don't even need your password to access your Dropbox account". It is dangerous for most of the cloud-based services including G drive.
Dropbox does not provide any antivirus scanning for the files which are to sync within. So if you want to stay 100% sure about your account data, make sure all machines have a good antivirus installed. Any top level tool such as Norton, Nod32 will solve the purpose.
man-in-the-cloud, this is a type of malware in which virus gets user's Dropbox access without his password. Once infected, it will look for the password token, a small file every device keeps for user's convenience. Once this token is obtained, later on, used to fool other machines to gain account access.
People are also facing various issues such as bad CPU usage, sync again etc. after removing viruses from their Dropbox scanned through an antivirus tool. To avoid this, install antivirus tools right at the beginning of installing other applications on your machines. For more head to wikipost forum discussion.
There are many incidents with major sites such as database leaks and malware attacks through hackers. Make sure not to use passwords repeatedly and same on various accounts. Keep a unique password and change it after a certain time.
Have comments? please share here in comments.
