Seadrive client doesn't prevent against thief

Hi,
Our company thinks about use Seafile. And one of arguments to move files workspace to server online would be unmounting disk after loging out. But because of cache on local disk data is still! accessible on local computer in cache folder! even when I’m not logged in. So when thief will stole my laptop he will be able to see my secret data still :frowning:

What would you say maintainers about that ?

Hi Wrkilu,

one advantage of Seafile as a Enterprise File Sync & Share solution is that the software makes files locally available through synchronisation. This suggests files are locally stored. You cannot offline access without locally storing the data.

If that is unacceptable for you, there are various ways to go about it. Encryption for example. In some cases, this may be the way to go. In most cases, however, I believe the “remote wipe” function is what you need.

When a computer is stolen, the admin can disconnect the device from the server and send an impuls to delete all data locally synced by Seafile’s clients.

Is that what you are looking for?

Even if there would be a solution where that is the case: how do you make sure files cannot be recovered from disk?

Unless secure encryption is used a thief can restore the data. That is a matter of fact, no matter what anyone promises.

Shoeper is right. Triggering of wipeing data isn’t enough. Think abou following scenario even simpler: thief takes my laptop. Then I go to webinterface and I trigger data wipe. BUT… thief won’t run it at all but will take out disk from laptop and mount it to another computer and read the data :frowning:

The only solution then is encrypting disk.

Best would be if Seafile could encrypt its folders on disk itself. And after typing password in it it should do 2 things:

  • unencrypt its folders on local disk
  • connect to cloud and sync files
    But I have no idea if such solution is possible to deploy at all.

Sorry to disappoint. Seafile cannot offer you what you are looking for.

This said, I doubt you will find a solution that can.

Also: Encryption of your local hard drive is always on option. But this is no feature that Seafile can or should provide.

So maybe Seafile will provide it in the future ? :wink:

Greetings for all maintainers!

And now, you hibernate your PC and the encryption keys are written to disk.

Encrypt your disk or enable full disk encryption within your OS.

1 Like