Best way to restrict access to a folder in Dropbox

Question

I currently run a business with around 10 staff members and we currently use Dropbox Pro 100GB to share all of our files.

It works very well and is inexpensive, however, I am taking on a number of new staff and would like to move the more sensitive documents into their own, protected folder. Currently, we all share one Dropbox account, I am aware that Dropbox for teams supports this, but it is far too expensive for us as a small company.

I have researched a number of solutions:

1) Set up a new standard Dropbox account just for use by management, which will contain all of the sensitive documents, and join the shared folder of the rest of my team to access the rest of the documents. As i understand it, this is not possible with a free account, as any dropbox shared folder added to your account will use up your quota

2) Set up some sort of TrueCrypt container, and install TrueCrypt on each trusted staff member's machine, and store the documents inside that. Would this be difficult to use? I'd imagine the sync-ing would not work so well as the disk would technically be mounted at the time of use and any changes would be a change to the actual container rather than individual files.

I was just wondering if anyone knows a way to do this without the drawbacks outlined above?

Thanks!

Solution 1

How about using another provider, such as Google Drive/SpiderOak/Wuala/whatever, for this folder? Trusted employees use both, everyone else just continues to use DropBox.

Solution 2

I would suggest a tree structure of folders with restricted access. You can give access to the lowest folders to new users and for the old users complete or higher access of the folders.

Comments

[Ben Voigt]

What you're already doing is likely in violation of the terms of service: "you agree not to disclose your password to any third party"

[Joe S]

I didn't even think of this... I guess I was looking for some sort of Dropbox trick so i didn't have another client to install but i think i'll just go with this approach and it should suit me fine until my needs get a little more complex to warrant the extra cost of other solutions. Thanks.