What is encryption at rest and in transit?
Encryption in transit protects your data while it travels over the network. Encryption at rest protects it once stored on the servers. Google applies both, but with its own keys: it can still read your files. The real question remains who holds the key. The topic continues in chapter 6 of my book, Vivre sans Google.
Information verified on July 13, 2026
Picture a parcel. Encryption in transit is the padlock during the journey: nobody can open it between your home and the warehouse. Encryption at rest is the padlock once the parcel sits on the shelf: even if the warehouse is burgled, the contents stay unreadable. Your files travel exactly that route between your device and a cloud’s servers.
Good news: Google Drive has applied both for years. So where is the problem? In the keys. Google creates them, keeps them and uses them. The warehouse is locked, but the keeper holds a master key: it can open any parcel to index it, analyze it or hand it over to authorities that ask.
The right question is therefore not “is my data encrypted?”, it almost always is, but “who holds the key?”. When the answer is “you, and nobody else”, that is called end-to-end encryption: the provider hosts parcels it is unable to open itself.
Where it plays out: chapter 6 of the book organizes your move out of Google Drive, the Cloud and storage category compares clouds where you alone hold the key, and the guide to leaving Google Drive gives the big picture.
This topic is chapter 6 of my book
It answers these questions, among others:
- how do you empty Google Drive without losing anything, Google Docs included?
- encrypted cloud, NAS or personal server: which one fits your profile?
- and what does a NAS at home really involve, day to day?
Forthcoming 22/10/2026 from Éditions Eyrolles
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Tech jargon, translated
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