Just how secure are your files? And what about those stored in the cloud? Even though your cloud storage provider may automatically encrypt your files, who has control of the key? With privacy being eroded at every turn, it’s important to know that if you want to protect sensitive files, you retain control over them.

Secryptor is a simple tool designed to encrypt and decrypt files from the comfort of your Mac or PC (the iOS version will only decrypt files). It’s aimed at those who wish to share or store files securely online, and ties in with your Dropbox account for this very purpose, but you can still encrypt and save files locally, then upload them manually to another cloud account.

It’s a little rough around the edges – the app’s German origins are seen in the fact the Windows installer is German only, and despite the fact you can technically switch language, the Mac version uses German dialogs too. Thankfully it’s all reasonably straightforward, and we trust these glitches will be ironed out in future updates.

The app itself is split into two parts: one for encrypting files, another for decrypting them. Click Encrypt file, select your file of choice and then choose a destination – either Dropbox (which you’ll have to authorise the first time you choose it) or a local folder.

In our tests, we struggled to get the Dropbox option to work on the Mac, but the Windows version worked perfectly. Once done, your file is encrypted and a download code provided for you to send to someone else who can subsequently obtain and decrypt the file (with the password of course, which you should communicate separately).

When prompted for a password, you can tick “Remember password” to set a default password for all your encrypted files – a handy option, if obviously less secure than setting unique passwords for every file.

The net result is an encrypted copy of your file with a skt file extension. The original, unencrypted version is left intact. If saved locally, you can now upload the file and share it or access the file on another PC or Mac (or iOS device) using Secryptor to decrypt the file to retrieve its original contents.

It all works as expected, but it’s a shame you can’t easily encrypt a group of files at once (workaround: create a zip archive, then encrypt that). It’s also a little rough around the edges with this initial release, and lacking some of the more advanced features you can enjoy from a program like Quick Crypt. Nevertheless, it’s cross-platform and will appeal particularly to Dropbox users looking for additional layers of security for their cloud-based files.