There are so many services we use from Google. In other words, instead of handing Google your raw data and then worrying about how secure is Google Drive, you’re handing them a locked box. If the encryption keys are with you, a hacker who breaches the servers won’t be able to read the data because they won’t have access to the keys. Security experts often recommend you encrypt the data on your side as well (more on this below). They’re great products, but you don’t want to rely on one single company. It’s for this reason that I often advocate that people try to reduce their reliance on Google products. You have all your security eggs in the Google Drive security basket.

This means that the decryption keys lie with the service provider, which is Google. Google Drive encryption is done on the server-side. Since the old key is discarded, it enhances its security.Īlso, each data chunk is encrypted using a different key, which means it will take several attempts to hack a person’s entire data.īut what does this mean when we’re asking about how secure is Google Drive? Server-Side vs User-Side Encryption

When a user updates a document or file on Google Drive, that particular chunk is updated and a new security key is used to encrypt it. When storing your data, it is broken into chunks so that each chunk isn’t useful by itself. Google promotes the fact that they use multiple layers to protect user data.

The level of encryption determines how easy/hard it will be for them to decrypt what they gather. However, when that data is being transferred over the open internet, that is when the threat is most real.Ī hacker that’s lurking on your network (public or private) can intercept data as it is sent from your computer to the Google Drive server. To be clear, data stored anywhere, even on your own computer, is never 100% secure. Why have two different security encryption standards? It can be explained this way:ĭata in motion is data at greatest risk.

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