Nord Is Launching a New Product for Protecting Your Files Called NordLocker

Nord is famous for its VPN service NordVPN. But lately, they announced a very interesting move into private data protection. They will be releasing a brand new app this summer called NordLocker which will encrypt data on a personal computer so no one can access them without the app and the password. But does it have a chance to succeed?

VPN services are becoming more and more popular thanks to all the government surveillance and blocking. Even many non-tech users are now familiar with the VPN and understand how to use it and why. But what Nord is planning to do is something completely different never launched by any other VPN vendor.

Encrypting folder using NordLocker

Local file encryption services are around for some time and never gained massive popularity. Later users rather stored their sensitive data in a protected cloud. So NordLocker is kind of going backward by doing the encryption on the local drive. The main argument is security as Nord challenges the protection level of some of the mainstream cloud services (think Dropbox or Google Drive). Yet one of the options is to encrypt the data using NordLocker and upload them to your cloud storage. By this Nord is also stepping a bit more towards the standard security market (i.e. Norton, McAfee).

More details about NordLocker pricing and release

The app will be available for Windows and macOS computers. There won't be any mobile version (at least initially). You will be also able to share the access to encrypted files or folders but the other user will also need NordLocaker installed.

Sharing access to a folder via NordLocker

Pricing hasn't been revealed yet so we aren't sure how much the service will cost. We only know it will be subscription-based service (same as NordVPN) for which you will likely pay monthly or yearly.

There aren't any more details available only the release should be in summer 2019. If you are interested in this service you can signup and receive early access. But the announcement rose a big interested and discussion as over 40 users commented on the Nord blog post.

To be honest, we aren't sure if such app has the potential to succeed. It's too complicated to explain the value to common users. But Nord surely has a large userbase of existing NordVPN clients to whom NordLocker could be a good complement (i.e. cross-sell).