Encrypting sensitive data on Mac + Windows

Question

I've been a long-time Windows user, using a utility called AxCrypt to encrypt sensitive documents which holded sensitive info (bank passwords, credit card numbers, etc). I had an encrypted Excel spreadsheet, which was placed on a shared dropbox folder, where everyone who had the password could easily view the file, and if needed change the data and save (AxCrypt will automatically encrypt the file, which is saved to dropbox and synced to all users). It worked perfectly for years, and then 2 of us switched to Mac.

AxCrypt port to Mac doesn't allow the simple opening of encrypted file, changing it, and having it automatically encrypted.

So we either use Windows emulation on Mac, or find another solution that has a good experience (easily view encrypted files, easily change and re-encrypt, save to dropbox).

Anyone know on a solution that can help? I tried TrueCrypt, but it seems to be more cumbersome than the existing AxCrypt solution.

Answer 1

Here's the solution that I chose eventually: I'm using KeePassX as password manager: its database is on a dropbox shared folder. Since KeePass has a Mac OS X client, a Windows client and an iOS client for my iphone - it is exactly what I neeeded. (again, data file on iphone is replicated via iOS dropbox client).

Works for me, fantastically.

Answer 2

Consider using Wuala instead of Dropbox. It's the same service as Dropbox but has integrated encryption. Then you don't have to worry about encrypting before upload and decrypting after download anymore.

Disadvantages of Wuala are (in my opinion): a worse user experience, and user interface (which may be due to the fact that there are less interface designers and more encryption engineers at Wuala); and a higher memory usage (which is due to the fact that Wuala is Java based, and the encryption algorithms come at a price).

Answer 3

Here is a dmg or sparsbundle solution which will allow you to create the required container file for the files you want to encrypt: http://kelleycomputing.net/freedmg/

This file can then be placed in dropbox and mounted by macs. If you then need to mount the file on windows you will need to convert it to an iso as per:

https://superuser.com/questions/321159/how-to-mount-a-dmg-file-in-windows

Then everyone, mac and windows should be able to open the file.