Microsoft adds crypto and 2FA to bulked-up OneDrive

Microsoft has announced it will add two-factor authentication (2FA) to its OneDrive storage service, plus more storage capacity for no extra charge.

2FA will be applied to a new feature called Personal Vault, a sub-folder in a user's OneDrive that will be encrypted at rest and in transit. Personal Vaults will also offer suspicious activity monitoring, ransomware detection and recovery, mass file deletion notifications and recovery, virus scanning and version history.

The new feature is designed to store users' important personal data. Personal Vaults also allow OneDrive users to scan documents or save photos directly into the secure sub-folder, and will automatically relock devices after a short period of activity, meaning users don’t have to worry whether they’ve OneDrive open on a PC or mobile device.

Personal Vault will start rolling out soon as an update to OneDrive. Australia is the first to get its hands on the new feature, as well as New Zealand and Canada, and will roll out to the rest of the world by the end of the year.

Microsoft also announced more storage options for OneDrive standalone plans, which will increase its data storage limit from 50GB to 100GB for no additional cost.

Office 365 customers already get 1TB of OneDrive storage with their subscription, but can now add up to 1TB of additional storage in increments of 200GB for US$1.99 per month.