Huawei without Google in 2023? It is time to give up

Proton Drive Can Now Automatically Backup And Encrypt Your IPhone Photos

Losing my iPhone or having my iPhone stolen is a nightmare of mine. I hope it never happens. That's why I try to prepare for the eventuality of having all my data gone in an instant. I back up my iPhone routinely, and I know what I would do if it vanished.

Starting Thursday, I have another way to back up some of the iPhone data I care most about and do it in a secure way. Proton announced that its cloud storage product, Proton Drive, supports automatic, end-to-end encrypted iPhone photo backups.

Proton Drive is a good alternative to Google Drive, iCloud, Microsoft OneNote, Dropbox, and any other cloud storage service. Proton's advantage over some of its rivals is that it offers end-to-end encryption for the data you store in the cloud. Proton Drive is available as a separate app on iPhone. That's how you'll start backing up your iPhones to Proton's cloud. Proton says in a blog post that it encrypts both the photos and the metadata on the device before they're synced to the cloud. As long as you don't forget your password, you'll be the only person able to access the cloud files. Tech. Entertainment. Science. Your inbox. Sign up for the most interesting tech & entertainment news out there. By signing up, I agree to the Terms of Use and have reviewed the Privacy Notice. To start backing up iPhone photos to Proton Drive, you'll need to download the Proton Drive app for iOS. Then, enable automatic camera uploads, let the app access your photos, and you're done. After that, Proton Drive will keep grabbing all your pictures and organize them by date and month. You can manage the photos in Proton Drive and delete the ones you don't actually want to keep. You'll get a free Proton Drive account if you create a Proton account. This also gives you access to other apps from the Swiss developer. Mail, VPN, Calendar, and Proton Pass are part of Proton's offering, in addition to Drive. Proton Pass is also one of my favorites, a password manager app I use about as much as 1Password these days. However, the free Proton Drive account only has 5GB of cloud data, which is probably insufficient to back up your entire iPhone photo gallery. Premium plans start as low as $3.49 per month for 200GB of data, assuming you go for a two-year contract. If you choose the monthly option, you'll have to pay $4.99 per month. Meanwhile, 200GB of iCloud Plus cloud storage costs $2.99 per month. That might be a more natural way for iPhone users to back up photos. You'd also back up your entire iPhone. ICloud also offers end-to-end encryption for data backups. Google Photos is another alternative for backing up iPhone photos, but it doesn't get end-to-end encryption like Proton Drive and iCloud.

How To Encrypt And Decrypt A File

Located in Denver, Chad Davis has been writing about technology for more than 10 years. He is a technical writer for information technology and product development. Davis provides grant writing and marketing services to small businesses. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in professional writing from the University of New Mexico.

Encrypting File System (EFS) On Windows 11/10 Explained

The Encrypting File System or EFS Encryption is one of the components of the NTFS file system. It is available on a high range of Windows operating systems. It is supported on Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server editions. There are other Cryptographic file systems available on other operating systems apart from Windows but Microsoft EFS is exclusive only to the Windows Operating Systems. It uses symmetric key encryption with a combination with public key technology to protect files. The file data is then encrypted with a symmetric algorithm called as DESX.

The key used for these kinds of symmetric encryption is called as File Encryption Key (or FEK). This FEK is in return encrypted with a public or a private key algorithm like RSA and stored with the file. The main positive aspect of using two different algorithms is that the speed of encrypting those files. And these increase in speeds of encrypting files helps the users to effectively encrypt large chunks of data. The speed of symmetric algorithms is about 1000x faster than that of the traditional asymmetric encryption techniques.

The process of EFS Encryption

The process is fairly simple yet secure.

Encryption The first step involves the file itself. Using the Symmetric Key (FEK) the file is encrypted. This is just one aspect of the total encryption. Now the Symmetric Key (FEK) is encrypted with a public key for the user, and the Encrypted FEK is stored in the Encrypted file's header. As simple as that. Decryption Here, the reverse of encryption is done as the name suggests. First of all, the Encrypted FEK from the Encrypted File's Header is fetched and decrypted using the Public Key. Now, the decrypted FEK is used to decrypt the Encrypted file finally and then the file is made readable to the authorized user. EFS vs. BitLocker encryption BitLocker is another technique of encrypting files on Windows just like EFS. This means that Windows provides two methods of encrypting files just on Windows. A user can also encrypt a file twice by encrypting it first with EFS and then with BitLocker or vice versa. This feature makes it 2x more secure than usual. BitLocker has an image of slowing down the computer when used to encrypt files, but EFS is considered to be far more light-weight. But this difference is not seen much on modern hardware that is available and used more often. Summing up EFS encryption encrypts files or folders one by one. Unlike BitLocker that encrypts them together. This also means that when a file is executed, and Windows creates a temporary cache of that file, that temporary cache can be used as a leak to the information and unauthorized access can be taken over by an unintended user. EFS works with NTFS only. This does not mean that a user should not be using EFS but what this really means is that the user has a choice of encrypting files with a suitable algorithm depending upon what type of data that file stores within it. We will in the next few days, cover the following topics: How to encrypt files with EFS Encryption How to decrypt EFS Encrypted Files and Folders How to back up your EFS encryption key. Stay tuned!

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