Dropbox Security

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Faanie

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Wish I could ban just ban it.


The problem I am having is firstly that I can’t control what goes on there, I can’t protect the companies intellectual property.

The second problem is one "tool" decides to upload some large files and I have 20 people here syncing. Like this morning I had one person using 1GB of traffic in no time at all because some friends decided to share some music.

Obviously they are not supposed to be setting up folders with their friends and share all sorts of # with it, but it happens. It doesn’t just have to be that, it could be work related stuff and the same scenario happens.

I should probably add that it’s a global company and when I was bringing down the hammer on the offenders this morning they started complaining because our users in Europe uses it extensively.


How do you guys control the flow of information in the cloud and what would you do in this scenario?

I have some ideas, but it would be nice to hear about solutions that was implemented by the community and know of potential pitfalls before the time. It needs to work on a global scale and I don’t have the luxury of trial and error. We do have an FTP site, but throttling on FTP is a problem (client side).
 
ban it from the end-user's PC and create a shared folder on your server with a company specific dropbox user.

if they then have to share files with their users in europe (or wherever) they can place those files on the server that has them linked to dropbox account and will start syncing. the users will then share with the company dropbox account.

You can take it a step further and have the shared folders you give them not be monitored by dropbox. Then have a script run to remove any music/video files (provided your company doesn't do any music/video type stuff) before it moves the files to the dropbox shared folders for syncing

The same thing can happen both ways. Not sure about dropbox settings, but check if you can sync only specific files. Then the middle step i explained won't be necessary.

Then it's easy to ban all traffic to/from dropbox on all the users except the server and manage anything like that from a centralized controlled point of exit/entry
 
That can work in a way. The only problem is with the confidential stuff, not everyone should be able to see everything.

The powers that be has been pushing for SharePoint.
 
The powers that be are a bunch of morons usually.

How would SharePoint help if your European users need access to data anyway?

With Active Directory (I'm assuming you are using windows/server), you can give every user their own folder to place documents in. They'll have their own shared URL through DropBox which will be password protected. AD will handle that user x can't access user y's folder etc
 
Just in Summary:

Create a DropBox account for the company
Setup the Shared User folders (each can only access their own folder on the server)
Filter any files you don't want synced (provided Dropbox doesn't have a feature to filter unwanted files from the directories they monitor)
Provide share links for each specific user with their own password from the Dropbox Company account

so you will have directories that look like this:

Pietie
Kosie
Jannie
Sarie
Faanie

Sarie will get her own share link with her own password that she can send to clients or whoever, but can't see Faanie, Jannie,Pietie and Kosie's folders because they don't want to share with her.

You only have 1 DropBox account to manage
You can ban dropbox from the users PC's (or at least the URL to connect to dropbox so they can't sync)
You maintain a high level of security when it comes to confidential data
You still have unthrottled bandwidth available like you do now to share these files worldwide from Dropbox
 
AlphaJohn said:
Push for https://www.box.com/

It's designed for exactly this type of crap, Security, Admin and all. See https://www.box.com/enterprise/security-and-architecture/ Only idiots use Dropbox for corporates.

There is no indepandant audit on what they do and how they treat your companies secrets.
Click to expand...

Not with the way I explained he should approach the problem. Plus then you're not plagued with the nice "per user" price tag of what you suggested and only have to worry about disk space upgrades. (the one you suggested even has file size limits)

Entry level "pro" on dropbox is $10 a month giving you 100gb out of the gate. He can upgrade to "Team" which I think might be worth looking into and get 1tb of disk space for $100 a month and that's limited to 5 users. He only has to use 1 user if he does it via the server only.
 
The company i work for is also European, and Dropbox , skype , mailbigfile, you sendit , FileGooi ,is banned you are not allowed to use it.
Our company is very protective over its data due to us having lots of Embargo Information on Products.

We block the executable via the registry and we do monthly software scans to report the downloaded exe and at the same time sort out keygens/cracks and other piracty stuff and all of that. when someone is caught with authorized software, he/she gets reported to HR and if the user continues they will get a warning ect ect.

The argument here was that they needed to share information with other parties,, so the guys in europe, created a File Upload service which we can use internally and with customers, with that it has a log of files uploaded and shared with who ever.

You will not be able to prevent intelectual property theft by just doing this unless you want to remove USB ports ect ect.

You can only put a system in place for the "Ignorant" ones who dont know that they are doing harm.
If someone wants to steal info , they will, but then if they get caught they are on their own.
 
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Also on a side-note. He did mention they have an FTP solution but is throttled. I don't remember any FTP solution I've worked with in the past that have been throttled.

a VPS with Filezilla or some other FTP server software on it is more than enough and bandwidth overseas (and now, locally) is uncapped on hosting (well, most are)
 
AcidRaZor said:
Also on a side-note. He did mention they have an FTP solution but is throttled. I don't remember any FTP solution I've worked with in the past that have been throttled.

a VPS with Filezilla or some other FTP server software on it is more than enough and bandwidth overseas (and now, locally) is uncapped on hosting (well, most are)
Click to expand...


The throttling happens out there somewhere on one of the international routers. It's only local guys that are affected? I really don't know what is up with that. Throttled to about 120KB/sec per connection when accessing the site from SA. It's not the ISP
 
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