You Should Encrypt Your Files Before Uploading Them To The Cloud - Here's Why

Cloud storage is a reliable way to backup important files. Yes, you can always use an external hard drive or SSD, but as long as you're regularly backing up your data, the cloud is an excellent redundancy against failures. If your drive dies, there's a corrupted sector, or you lose access to it, you still have the cloud backup. You won't lose your entire work-in-progress novel or your spreadsheet database with all your budget and finance details, they're recoverable. But with most of that data, especially when it's sensitive in nature, there's one more step you should take before uploading. You should encrypt your files for a separate layer of protection.

Encryption makes it so even if files are hijacked, stolen, or accessed by an unauthorized party the data itself is unreadable without the encryption key. Since cloud service providers also normally use encryption, personal encryption creates a double layer of protection. You can add end-to-end encryption for your iCloud backups, for example. But before even uploading the related files, you should encrypt them yourself locally using a security tool. 

Think of it this way. You might have a deadbolt on the front door to your house, but installing a chain or a latch at the top boosts security even more. That extra lock is akin to the personal encryption you'd use before uploading data. If someone tries to kick open the door with just a deadbolt in place it might fail and give way, but with extra locks enforcing protection, that brute force attack is less likely to work.

Realistically, you should encrypt or use encryption tools on anything that's sensitive. That includes personal documents, unique documents you want preserved long-term, photos and videos, archives — like zip or RAR folders — medical records, financial documents, legal documents or rulings, business documents, anything to do with intellectual property, login credentials and, if you store them in files or documents, passwords. Hopefully, you're using one of the best password managers people swear by or a similar tool to store your account details instead of keeping local files. You could also ditch your passwords altogether and use passkeys instead. But if you're storing account names and passwords, encrypt them as soon as possible.

The takeaway is that anything you want protected from prying eyes and people you cannot trust should be encrypted. There are both free and paid tools you can use to encrypt data locally. A great premium example is Evernote. Alternatively, VeraCrypt and TrueCrypt are free, open-source options, with many more available and easily discoverable with a simple web search.

As a quick walkthrough, here's how encrypting your cloud data beforehand might look. It's not necessary, but you could first archive the file or folder using something like 7-Zip. This not only compresses the file, so it takes less storage space, but adds an extra step on top of everything else — you first have to unpack the archive before accessing content stored within it. Then, use your preferred form of encryption. Finally, upload the content to the cloud service of your choice. To decrypt and access the content you just do it all in reverse. Download > decrypt > unpack.