BoxCryptor, an on-the-fly encryption service that’s optimized for cloud storage services like Dropbox, Box.net and Google Drive, just announced the launch of its native Mac application. This new Mac app joins the company’s previously released Windows, iOS and Android apps. In addition, the Germany-based company is also announcing its new pricing structure, which now for the first time includes a free version without limits to the size of your encrypted folder. The company’s mobile apps, which let you access your encrypted cloud storage folders, are also now available for free (though the free versions have some limitations and feature in-app purchases to unlock some features).
In addition, the BoxCryptor team told us that it quietly closed its first funding round at the beginning of May. While the company wouldn’t specify the exact amount of this round, it did note that it was a “mid six-digit amount.” The investors in this round are Jan Hichert, Markus Hennig and Gert Hansen, the founders of German security firm Astaro, which was acquired by Sophos last year.
The company launched last year and was founded by first-time startup founders Andrea Wittek and Robert Freudenreich. Over the course of the last year, the team, which now consists of 7 people, launched its Windows, Android and iOS apps. The company tells us that its apps have been downloaded more than 100,000 times and are currently being used in 30 countries. The company was a finalist at the London Web Summit in March 2012 and a finalist at the NEXT conference in Berlin in May 2012.
When our own Mike Butcher briefly wrote about the company earlier this year in the context of the London Web Summit, he noted that it “could have plenty of potential especially in the security conscious enterprise sector.” Indeed, given that it’s inevitable that employees are going to use Dropbox or Google Drive – whether their IT department authorize this or not – there can be little doubt that adding an extra layer of security to business data in the cloud is a good thing (Boxcryptor encrypts your data using the AES-256 standard). Unsurprisingly then, the BoxCryptor team says that it’s especially popular among business users and especially small teams.