
In my search for a backup solution that was known for encryption, I have found Tresorit. They pride themselves in never having been hacked and include a count on their website showing number who attempted with zero success. This is a current “hot button” topic as I quest to find solutions to protect my own privacy and security. As I think we can all agree – my information, my stuff! As an aside – looking for security in your email environment? Take a look at what
Protonmail is up to!
Okay, now that I have said my peace about security, let’s take a look at what
Tresorit has to offer. At first look, I was pleased that I was able to pick and choose the files/folders I was interested in backing up. Unlike other backup solutions I’ve researched, where they overtake your computer and backup every file and preference setting, known to man. This solution keeps you in the drivers seat and lets you pick from the start what data you’d like to backup.
Tresorit setup and walk-thru is far different than the nightmare of many other backup solutions. After
signing-up for a plan, and downloading their software on my Mac, the setup was seamless. The look and feel of the product is minimalistic, but powerful and effective. Creating ‘tresors’ or backups was quite simple. Once Tresorit is open, you can easily create a new ‘tresor’ by click on the “+” button. Simply name the ‘tresor’ and point it to the folder where desired data resides.
After selecting ‘New tresor’, you need to select the folder to backup and then create a name for your tresor as shown below.
If that seems like one step too many, you can always right click on a folder within Finder for Mac, or Explorer for Windows, and select ‘create tresor’. Note: I did have an issue with this once. When I right-clicked on a folder I wasn’t shown the ‘Create tresor’ option within the menu. After rebooting, I was able to see this once again. Not sure if a bug or just fluke, but certainly isn’t a show stopper.
Actual backup process:
After setting my initial tresor, I noticed that I had a few items I didn’t need backed up. Instead of needing to moving them out of my folder, Tresorit allows you to exclude files/folders. Within the treorit main menu, you can click the ‘more’ button and select ’selective sync’. This then provides you the ability to uncheck file(s)/folder(s) you don’t wish to backup within this tresor.
Pricing:
Currently, Tresorit’s Premium package is $12.50USD/mo and includes 100GB of data. There are additional packages for business and enterprises, however my review is solely on the premium package. They aren’t the cheapest solution for online backup storage, however, I definitely cannot argue with the pricing they have in place with the knowing security is number one to them.
Speed and performance:
During my tests, I noticed that while backing up folders, my internet browsing experience suffered slightly. My home internet connection is not the fastest to begin with and I noticed that pages were loading much slower. Perhaps throttling the bandwidth of Tresorit is worth taking a look at when setting up initial tresors. This can be found under Tresorit / Preferences / Network Bandwidth, and you are able to select download and upload limits. When creating new files/folders within my documents on my Mac, its was mere seconds later that I received notification from Tresor that a file was uploaded. I really like this feature!
Suggestions & Improvements:
Looking at support documents from
Tresor, I noticed that you could right click any folder and click ‘create Tresor’. However, when I attempted to do so on many folders, I wasn’t seeing this option. (log off, reboot? does this fix it?)
During my testing, one setting I couldn’t find that I would like to see implemented is an estimated file transfer time in which a folder will be synced as well as transfer speeds of the folder or file. It does provide a percentage of transferring but we have no reference point.
Audible Notifications:
When uploading a folder initially with multiple files you receive an abundance of audible notifications informing that files were successfully uploaded. While I appreciate a notification, I would like the option to mute the audible portion of the notifications. Hearing audible notifications 12 times when uploading 40 or 50 files gets annoying quickly. After you have completed a tresor and you log back into your computer, yet another audible notification is sent congratulating you. I would love to see an option for silencing all audible notifications – I just don’t need annoying alerts to upload files!
Security:
Even the most secure sites cannot be too secure. The one concern I have with Tresorit is they are using a lightweight Tresorit javascript package to allow for decrypting of files when sharing encrypted links. If Tresorit were to be attacked, it’s possible that the hackers could modify the lightweight javascript code and redirect the now decrypted files to them. Tresorit takes this very seriously and continuously monitors their servers and if a suspension of intrusion detector were to occur, they have a shutdown policy in place.
Wrap-up:
All-in-all, I think this is a Tresorit is a sound solution and hope that some of the annoyance can be easily modified. I look forward to seeing Tresorit grow and enhance their product and invite you to take a look and see if this solution might fit your needs.
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