
Dropbox for Business - charlieirish
https://www.dropbox.com/business/
======
ayanb
Couple of reasons why this might be news.

1\. Under /features check out the 'Certification and Compliance section'.

>> Dropbox's storage is SSAE16/SOC1, SOC2, ISAE 3402 and ISO 27001 certified
on Amazon S3 and may provide data mirroring across other secure data centers

SSAE16/SOC1 compliances were not present in the earlier versions and this is a
decent step forward for adoption of dropbox in larg(ish) IT departments. This
will imply "firewalls are in place at all externally facing access points".

2\. From a usability point of view, the promise of a seamless way to integrate
both your personal and work accounts from the same device.

3\. "Seamlessly upgrade existing Dropbox accounts to Dropbox for Business and
transfer files to a co-worker when someone leaves", although this is in Beta
currently, this reduces a lot of headache for IT departments during employee
exits.

Seems like most of the other features remain the same, though.

~~~
nvk
Until they implement client side encryption I cannot use this service. Forget
about NSA, what about rogue admins, or just plain bugs.

Dropbox = Your-Unencrypted-Files-Here.com

~~~
Spooky23
Client side encryption defeats the purpose of most of the value-add features
of Dropbox.

I'd actually argue that it would make the service more dangerous, as once you
decrypt a file outside of the context of your desktop, the Dropbox service has
the key. How do you share a file on the web or via mobile client with low
friction without rendering that client-side encryption useless? (A: You
don't.)

IMO, if you have data security needs that necessitate client-side encryption,
and you use a public service to store that information, you need to give up
whiz-bang features or reduce your security requirement.

~~~
mynegation
> How do you share a file on the web or via mobile client with low friction
> without rendering that client-side encryption useless? (A: You don't.)

Exactly. Not all of us _need_ to share files, I just need a secure backup. And
it is technically possible to access files on various clients using only
client-side encryption and separate encrypted files from plain-text should you
need to.

------
buro9
The only reason we still use Dropbox rather than Box is that Dropbox is
ubiquitous.

For us this means one thing: There is a well-supported and maintained Linux
client that just works.

I've no doubt we'll be giving Dropbox for Business a try, but it's pretty much
because of the ubiquity rather than anything else.

~~~
nader
we tried box and dropbox and went with dropbox as it supports LAN-Sync
(tremendously helpful when you are shoving around Photoshop files) which box
didn't at the time and the Linux client.

~~~
buro9
On the same topic, we thought about btsync as well. But ubiquity won out,
there's a lot of convenience in being in a meeting and being able to check
your phone and pulling up the latest copy of a document.

~~~
davidu
box lets you pull up a file on your phone... we find the versioning and
collaboration features of box to be far supperior to dropbox... lan sync is
nice though, I didn't actually know dropbox had that.

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geuis
Well, this would have been great to have before making me convert my
_personal_ account, i.e. with my non-work email address, to an account managed
by my employer.

~~~
jasonlotito
Why would you do this, though? It's your personal account. When I had to
connect to a business account, I set up a second account.

~~~
geuis
The problem is that we all use Dropbox to share files around the office. So if
someone is at home, they still need access, and you can only be signed in with
one account at a time. The other benefit is that we get a HUGE amount of
storage under a business account.

All in all, the whole process needs some revision on their part.

~~~
jasonlotito
You can run 2 dropbox instances at the same time, both hooked into a different
account.

This isn't the same way I did it, but here is an article on it.

[http://lifehacker.com/5971204/run-multiple-dropbox-
accounts-...](http://lifehacker.com/5971204/run-multiple-dropbox-accounts-on-
one-computer)

------
fosap
Host your valuable business secrets with easy NSA access.

~~~
axx
Same here, since the Snowden revelations we have absolutely no interest in
storing ANYTHING in the US.

Dropbox is a great Tool, no question, but if you're a company (outside of the
US) you should think about what you store where.

I'm fine with Dropbox, but there's my Boss, you know.

~~~
sleepyhead
A good alternative outside the US is
[http://www.jottacloud.com/](http://www.jottacloud.com/). Servers in Norway.

~~~
Karunamon
This probably puts you at even greater risk, since the intelligence folks
don't even have the _pretense_ of rule of law once you're outside the borders.
That, and the Nordic countries have traditionally been very friendly to U.S.
req^H^H^Hdemands for information.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
Easier (legally) for NSA folk or other bad actors to hack yes. But when did
that stop them?

But if your data never crosses a US border (E.g. a Norwegian person using
jottacloud), then the NSA cable taps have no effect. If your server is not in
a US server farm or in a US Company, then it can't be subverted at destination
the way that lavabit was going to go (and the other major companies have
already gone).

I'm really suspicious of this "safer in the USA" stuff right now.

~~~
msrpotus
I somehow doubt the NSA is going to be constrained because it doesn't cross a
border. With the NSA's money and engineering resources, I don't really think
any data is safe anywhere.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> I somehow doubt the NSA is going to be constrained because it doesn't cross
> a border.

That taps at borders which NSA / GCHQ have _legal_ access to are well
documented: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/operation-
temp...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/operation-tempora-gchq-
in-fresh-snooping-row-as-it-eavesdrops-on-phones-and-the-
internet-8669137.html)

Other borders ... not so much.

> With the NSA's money and engineering resources, I don't really think any
> data is safe anywhere.

The NSA are legally constrained. They can't walk into a data center in Germany
waving a court order and insist on a tap and no publicity. This is essentially
what happened to lavabit _because_ their data center was in the US. Yeah, a
data center in Europe could be hacked. but:

1) Any bad actor could try to do this

2) Trying to do this in a notionally friendly country is not the most
diplomatic thing. Not saying it can't happen but it would be arrogant and
risky. Consider the fallout if some disgruntled sysadmin drops dox on it.
[http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/nsa-s-alleged-spying-on-
merkel-...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/nsa-s-alleged-spying-on-merkel-may-
have-broken-german-law-1.2253378)

------
lpolovets
One of the features is "All the space you need. Start with 1,000 GB and get
more space as your team grows. If you run out, tell us and we'll increase it
for free."

I wonder if that means one could sign up for 5 accounts and pay $75/month for
unlimited space for personal use. (You could just use one account and never
sync the other four.)

~~~
Paul12345534
Or use Crashplan for $5 a month (paying yearly) and store a TB anyways ;)

~~~
driverdan
CrashPlan is a backup / archiving app. Its use case is very different than
Dropbox.

------
jakemcgraw
Anyone else having their office ISP connection totally destroyed by 100+
Dropbox clients attempting Monday morning sync? We have a balanced, 300Mbs
connection for about 160 users, and our network becomes unreliable during 5
minute bursts throughout the day.

~~~
bhouston
I thought Dropbox implemented some type of local lan sync?

------
BrentOzar
Not sure why this is news - they've had this for months. I signed up for the
business plan the instant it was available several months ago.

~~~
roel_v
It's about the new features, which make quite a difference (being able to use
both business and personal from one account).

------
aragot
Maybe I'm missing some information, but how can that not be sponsored by the
NSA? Will foreign companies still trust such a service? It's still excellent
service, though, but I'm wondering how it will become a good deal for clients.

------
bg0
Google Drive is cheaper, and you can collaborate way easier than dropbox
unfortunately. I love dropbox but I can't see myself switching if Google is
offering the same thing for a better price.

------
neals
I guess it is inevtiable for Dropbox to keep offering 5Gb for free accounts
for much longer. (Are they even doing that?)

~~~
Spiritus
Free accounts are 2GB, however you can do a couple of tasks to get more.

~~~
mateuszf
With few tricks I went to 18GB.

~~~
klausjensen
Could you elaborate?

~~~
ghshephard
I won't speak for the parent, but, some people have been know to use Virtual
Machine that pretend to be a "Friend" and take advantage of Dropbox's customer
acquisition technique.

~~~
JoshGlazebrook
This works. They use your MAC address of your network adapter to differentiate
referrals.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
No they don't; I've referred multiple times from the same machine using
different users.

------
capkutay
It'd be great if you could have dropbox for business but be able to deploy it
and maintain it on your own servers.

------
scotthtaylor
Why is this at the top of HN?

~~~
coldtea
Because people voted for it, use the service, and are interested in discussing
it. You can see the discussion this brought forward in this very page.

Now, why was your comment even made again?

