Nextcloud Encryption – best practice?

[David 0]

Hey,

Since there were some recent changes with Nextclouds E2E encryption, I wonder what might is the "most secure yet easy-to-use-for-non-tech-savvy-people" (aka "users", not admins) for secure file storage & sharing with Nextcloud on Cloudron.

2FA might be too much for most of my team, is server side encryption sufficient? Do I need any App that adds another layer of security?

thanks in advance!
David

[jdaviescoates]

I generally don't bother encrypting stuff myself. My reasoning for this is that I once did a full disk encryption at OS install on an netbook... and then forgot my passphrase (this was years before I started using a password manager to remember such thing) and lost absolutely everything. I tend to think I'm more likely to loose everything due to some encryption related thing going wrong than I am to get hacked

[humptydumpty]

Last time I looked into this, Nextcloud encryption is useless. Use Cryptomator for full encryption: https://cryptomator.org/encrypt-dropbox/

[IniBudi]

@humptydumpty I also use this tool, it's really awsome!

[girish]

Does this mean the files are saved encrypted on disk? Where are the keys for the encryption saved (I guess in each client?) How does search work?

[humptydumpty]

@girish somehow I missed this - yes, the files are encrypted in some weird format and with different file names. The encryption keys are saved on the device locally, but I'm not expert so don't quote me on that. All I know is that it adds another layer to the security onion

I've read where others are having issues with it keeping up with edited files. I have it encrypting my 3D modeling files which go through multiple edits/saves every few minutes while being used with no ill effects. The funny thing is that if I try to edit and re-save a non-encrypted file again while it's syncing, NC will throw a fit.