In light of recent events regarding the NSA tapping into personal data mines without warrant, interest in securing the cloud has significantly risen these past few months.

Most cloud providers offer secure services, but that doesn’t really assure users that hackers can’t get into their cloud accounts.  And cloud users should keep in mind that they are still responsible for the security of their files, so the best way to go about this is to encrypt them.  Before you panic, encrypting your files in the cloud isn’t that hard.  You don’t have to learn code or hire a person to encrypt your files, as there are some services that offers encryption for free, or a small fee.

Here are some encryption tools that would help you secure your files in the cloud:

5 Tools to Encrypt Files for Top Cloud Providers

CipherCloud

CipherCloud uses standards-based AES 256-bit encryption, established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001 and deployed in the U.S. Government and organizations globally.  AES is a symmetric-key algorithm, which means the same key is used for both encrypting and decrypting data. AES can use keys sizes of 128, 192, or 256 bit–which is the highest commercially available level of encryption.

CipherCloud offers encryption for SalesForce, Office365, GmailBox, Amazon Web Services, and just about any cloud-based application.  CipherCloud offers free trial for SalesForce and Gmail.

Boxcryptor

Boxcryptor is an encryption program that is easy to install and use.  It uses AES-256 and RSA encryption algorithms to protect your files.  What it does is create a virtual drive on your computer where you can drop your files for encryption before syncing it to the cloud service of your choice.  Boxcryptor supports major cloud storage providers such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, SugarSync, as well as clouds that use the WebDAV standard like Cubby, Strato HiDrive, and ownCloud.

It offers a free version which offers AES-256 and RSA encryption, Secure File Access Sharing and support for Mobile Apps.  If you want Filename Encryption, support for unlimited providers and unlimited devices, it costs $4 a year.  For enterprise use, it costs $96 a year.

Boxcryptor is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Windows RT, Linux, Chrome, iOS and Android.

Viivo

Created by PKWARE, the company who created the .ZIP file, Viivo encrypts documents across all of your devices for storage & sharing on Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and SkyDrive.  It is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, iOS and Android.

The free version offers secure file access, storing and sharing on any device, while the Pro version allows file compression to up to 95 percent so you don’t have to pay more for cloud storage,  and save more to the Cloud without paying for additional storage devices, and the Enterprise version offers all the benefits of Viivo Pro plus Enterprise Management Console and Reporting Dashboards.

Cloudfogger

Cloudfogger encrypts data on your local device before it gets synced to the cloud.  It uses AES-256bit to protect your data so you can be sure that files are safe and secured.  It is compatible for use on Windows, Mac OS X, Android and iOS, and it protects files on SkyDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive.  You can even share your encrypted files with others without giving away your Cloudfogger credentials, plus it has a portable file format which makes file distribution via email or USB keys are easy but still secure.  Oh, and it’s free, so that’s a huge plus.

SafeMonk

SafeMonk uses unique per file 256bit AES keys for file encryption as well as unique per directory 256bit AES keys to the file keys in that directory.  Then the parent of all the directory keys is encrypted with private RSA key that is protected by a user’s password, client key and recovery code.

Sharing is secured by generating unique per recipient share keys that protect the AES directory key of the shared directory and are encrypted with the recipients Public RSA key.  The connection between a users and SafeMonk’s servers is established using TLS 1.1 that is encrypted with AES_256_CBC and uses ECDHE_RSA as the key exchange mechanism.

It is compatible with Windows, Mac, iOS and Android and encrypts Dropbox files.  Aside from encryption, it also offers remote wipe, secure sharing without passwords, and account recovery.