German encrypted cloud storage Boxcryptor's joining Dropbox. In a blog post from the founding team yesterday, Boxcryptor customers were given reassurances their contracts, customer data and keys will be unaffected — none of their data will move over to Dropbox, for now.

Boxcryptor said it was being acquired nearly 12 years after launching in 2011, allowing its encryption tools like AES-256 security and on-the-fly encryption to be meshed into the Dropbox cloud storage product. It's been part of the Dropbox ecosystem already for some time now, as part of the Premium Technology partnership programme.

An agreement has been signed for Dropbox to acquire "several key" Boxcryptor assets, but no word on when the deal closes, though new Boxcryptor user accounts were stopped on November 29th.

Initially, the beefed up security tools will only be for paid Dropbox users on one of the business plans.

In its own blog post, Dropbox recognised cloud users were demanding enhanced cybersecurity.

An Ernst & Young cybersecurity survey released last year showed more than three quarters reported a spike in IT hacks in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dropbox said: "To that end, we’ve heard from our customers that encrypted file storage is increasingly valuable to them and their teams, and there’s heightened demand for built-in functionality and features to support this in the Dropbox experience."