Microsoft OneDrive Gets a Secure Personal Vault, Additional Storage Plans

The consumer version of Microsoft's OneDrive Cloud storage service is getting a new security option and new storage plans. The software giant has announced new paid OneDrive Personal plans for OneDrive customers and Office 365 consumer subscribers and its OneDrive Personal Vault feature. The company has also tweaked the $1.99 (Rs. 123 in India) monthly OneDrive standalone storage plan to now offer 100GB of space, up from 50GB earlier. The existing subscribers will automatically get the extra storage. 

The new OneDrive Personal Vault feature will be protected by an additional step of identity verification, such as a PIN, fingerprint/facial authentication, or a two-factor authentication (2FA) code.

If you store files in the new Personal Vault area, you'll be prompted for an additional code each time you access them via the web, PC, or mobile devices, The Verge reported on Tuesday. The feature will be particularly useful to store sensitive documents like passport, financial documents, and more.

There is no limit on how many files can be uploaded to the Personal Vault. Microsoft says a user can store as many files, up to the OneDrive storage limit. Microsoft is seemingly the first cloud-storage provider to include such a feature. 

The tech behemoth is rolling out this feature to the web version of OneDrive, the iOS and Android mobile apps, and Windows 10 PCs; it is however, only rolling out to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada for the time being.

It will be available to all markets by the end of the year. Microsoft appears to be one of the first companies to add such a feature to its Cloud storage. iCloud, Google Drive, and Dropbox do not support 2FA-protected folders yet, the report added.

If you are using OneDrive as Office 365 subscriber, you can now purchase additional storage in chunks of 200GB starting at $1.99 (roughly Rs. 140) per month. 1TB of extra storage can be purchased for $9.99 (roughly Rs. 700) a month.

Written with inputs from IANS