Microsoft said Tuesday that OneDrive subscribers will be able to use the new OneDrive Personal Vault option, which adds increased security to their online files , as well as additional storage tiers for existing subscribers.
Personal Vault is designed for files that really matter: tax information, your passport scan, that kind of thing. OneDrive Personal Vault will debut overseas, specifically in Australia , New Zealand, and Canada , and will be available globally by the end of the year. OneDrive Personal Vault will offer the same features for free-tier and Office 365 subscribers, except for one thing: Office 365 users can have as much space as they want in Personal Vault, while those on OneDrive’s free or 100GB bonus plan can add a “limited number of files” to Personal Vault.
Microsoft also announced some major upgrades to its OneDrive service. For those already on OneDrive's 50GB/month storage plan, Microsoft will upgrade that plan to 100GB of cloud storage for free. Additionally, Microsoft is giving you the option to upgrade your OneDrive from 1TB to 2TB — though you'll pay $9.99 per month for the extra capacity.
At first glance, the new OneDrive Personal Vault doesn't seem to do much more than add 2-factor authentication to your OneDrive account — a security option that can already be applied to Microsoft account. But Microsoft says that Personal Vault applies an extra layer of protection, most notably by reducing the expiration period.
The difference seems to be that conventional two-factor authentication can actually be disabled if you're using a so-called trusted device, that is, a device that you've designated as trusted. A trusted device may still ask you to re-authenticate every now and then, especially if it's managed by an administrator.
With Personal Vault, the period during which the device is trusted is significantly reduced. This means that you will often need to verify your identity, using a fingerprint, your face, or a code delivered via email or SMS. (Microsoft said that the re-enrollment period will vary by device and can be somewhat adjusted by the user. The important thing here is that if your device is stolen or unexpectedly removed, Personal Vault will continue to protect your files.
Personal Vault will sync your files to a BitLocker-encrypted area of your hard drive if you're using Windows 10 Pro (Windows 10 Home doesn't support it.) OneDrive Personal Vault also includes the other protections that OneDrive previously built into it: ransomware protection , "at-rest encryption," mass file deletion and recovery, and virus scanning during download.
Microsoft OneDrive's capacity increase is much more conventional. Nothing has changed for those who don't pay for extra OneDrive storage. If you pay $1.99 a month for 50GB of OneDrive, your storage will increase to 100GB. And if you want more than a terabyte, you can have it — and go all the way up to 2TB, as we detailed above.
