- Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive.
If I were a betting man,
I'd say the odds are pretty good
that you've used
or are currently using one of these services
to store files in the cloud
and collaborate with your team.
I mean, as a creator myself,
I'm constantly sharing files back-and-forth with my team,
including very sensitive business documents, contracts,
and even client data that I need to keep private.
The problem with this current setup is that one,
I just don't like using Dropbox,
and two, I prefer the privacy assurance
of end-to-end encryption
that isn't available with Google Drive or OneDrive,
believe it or not.
I've already shared with you
the different client side encryption solutions
in a previous video,
but I've been on the hunt for an integrated solution
that makes sharing and collaborating with these files
both easy and very secure.
So here's what I found.
(techno music)
Hey, guys, it's Josh here with "All Things Secured,"
a channel where I share with you different techniques
and software solutions to improve your security
and privacy online.
This week, I wanna give you a peak behind the curtain
of a migration that I'm making away from Google Drive,
which is what my team is currently using,
and onto sync.com.
Now, there are a number of reasons
that I'm really attracted to Sync
as an alternative for our team,
including true zero knowledge encryption
that gives me a little piece of mind
as I upload files to the cloud,
unlimited file versioning
that keeps a copy of any and all changes made
to the file stored with Sync,
unlimited storage plans for teams
and a special device vault that I can use
as a personal cloud backup.
I'll get into that in a moment.
But if you really wanna know
why I'm starting to make this switch,
check out this side by side comparison.
Let's say I wanna share a file
with a contractor that has sensitive client data on it.
On the left, you see the three options
that Google Drive gives me for sharing.
I can either restrict it to a person's email address,
share it only within my company,
or make it entirely public.
That's it.
By contrast with Sync,
which you see on the right,
I have the ability to create a link to the shared file
that has a password,
an expiration date, permissions, a download limit,
and even the option for enhanced privacy,
which basically adds an additional layer
of end-to-end encryption to the shared link.
Now, on top of that
I have the ability to create shared folders
for specific teams or groups of people.
It's just a better way to share and collaborate
not only with those people on my team
but especially with those who aren't.
I guess I'm getting ahead of myself here.
Let's step back for a moment,
and let me show you what it's looked like
for me to migrate my files away from one cloud platform
and into Sync.
And spoiler alert,
Google does not make it easy to export all of these files.
So I've already created my sync.com account.
I'm gonna go in here,
and I need to install the app for my Mac.
And that's what I'm gonna start off doing right now
just so that there can be a sync between my folder
without necessarily having to log in on my browser.
(upbeat music)
Now I do have 2FA enabled on my account.
It is not the 2FA key,
but it's the next best thing
which is using the 2FA authenticator app,
which can be done through a number of different apps,
not just Google authenticator,
you've got Authy, you've got Yubico,
so many other options out there.
And that's what I've done here in order to make sure
that I've got my accounts secured as strong as it can be.
So if you look here in Finder on my Mac,
you'll see that Sync is a folder
that stays consistently updated
as long as my computer is connected to the internet.
Now what comes to migrating all of my files,
I really wish it was easy
as just dragging and dropping files from Google Drive
into that Sync folder.
Unfortunately, that's not the case
because a lot of what I have created within my drive
is the Google Docs and the Google Sheets,
and all those things that don't export very easily.
So what I have to do is I actually have to go
into something called Google Takeout.
So if you go to takeout.google.com,
now, I'm gonna take,
and I actually don't wanna import or export everything,
but I need to scroll down here into Drive.
And then I want to include only the stuff
that I want to have exported.
So let's just say everything for All Things Secured.
And then I'm gonna go down here.
I could do everything including Gmail,
but for now, I'm just gonna do this:
I'm gonna export once,
and I'm gonna make it a zip folder,
and exports larger than two gigabytes,
I could change that.
I don't think I have two gigabytes worth.
We'll find out.
But then I'm gonna create an export.
And what it's gonna do is it's gonna turn all
of those Google Doc files into DOCX files
or something that can be opened by Microsoft Word
or something else other than just Google Drive folders
because, yeah, we're not gonna be using that right now.
Same thing for every other file
and makes it into something
that can easily be imported into Sync.
So I'm gonna go ahead and wait for that export to finish,
and then I'm going to import it into Sync.
Okay, the export has been completed,
and I need to download the data.
It's gonna be in two different files.
And once that downloads
I'm going to import it directly into my sync folders.
So I was able to get it.
It's gonna be in Takeout and Takeout 1.
I'm gonna go ahead and put all of these
and then bring them over into Sync,
and same thing with the Takeout 2.
There we go.
And you'll notice right here,
it changed it into DOCX and XLSX file.
So basically files that can be opened
by most office type software,
whether that's Libre,
or whether you use,
obviously, Microsoft Office,
or even Google docs will reopen these files.
Now, it's gonna take time for Sync
to upload all of these files to the cloud
in an encrypted vault.
So that way it can be downloaded and used
on any of my devices.
By the way, in regard to my problems,
moving away from Google Sync was very helpful
in providing ideas on how to best do that.
They offer toll free phone support for teams,
which is really interesting,
but the response I got with email
was more than fast enough for me.
At this point, based on my experience thus far,
the ability to control how I share files internally
and externally is amazing.
And now I don't have to fiddle around
with these different client side encryption solutions,
which basically means me having to encrypt my own files
before I upload them to Google Drive or Dropbox
or whatever.
It's just easier with Sync.
From a security standpoint,
I like the fact that I can disable password reset
on my account,
which does present a little bit of a risk,
but it also ensures that Sync will never get access,
even temporary access,
to my encryption keys.
I have the ability to secure my account
with two-factor authentication apps,
which, you know I like,
but unfortunately,
at this point they don't accept FIDO key standard yet.
Data is stored on servers located in Canada,
but since Sync doesn't have access to your encryption keys
like other cloud providers do,
the data we stored there isn't viewable,
even if it was somehow stolen
or swiped in transit
or whatever.
But remember when I mentioned earlier
about a personal vault for each device?
Check this out.
Right now I'm using the Sync app on my iPhone.
And if you see here on the bottom,
we've got Files,
which is all the files
that have now been synced across my devices
for my Sync folder.
And then, of course, there's the Vault.
Now this vault means,
this is only for my iPhone,
this specific device that I use it for,
and I can put a backup of my iPhone,
I can put a backup of my photos,
I can add specific files or images
that I want to into my vault,
and it will stay synced in the cloud
for the specific device,
but it's not gonna be synced up
to all of my different devices.
So, it's almost like having a personal vault
as well as having a synced vault
with all of the other devices as well.
By the way, if this is something you wanted to try,
Sync has been very kind to offer a 10% discount
for those of you who are watching this.
If you go to sync.com/ats,
that stands for All Things Secured,
sync.com/ats,
you'll see that they give you a very generous five gigabytes
of space free if you sign up,
and you can test them out and see what you think.
It's been a goal of mine
to reduce my reliance on one company,
like Google,
for all things related to my business.
And this is one step that I've been taking
to help make that a reality.
So this is what I'm using right now.
I'm open to any thoughts and questions
in the comments section.
If you're still watching this far into the video,
I appreciate you
and hope that if you aren't already a subscriber
to "All Things Secured,"
you'll take that simple step
of just clicking the subscribe button right now.
Right there.