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Use secure USB drives

RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter

Published: April 24, 2015

You are taking a USB drive full of sensitive documents to a meeting.

You stop at Angel Falls to coffee up in preparation.

You lose the drive, which is a USB 2.0 unsecure thumb drive.

You get fired.

Rewind:

You lose the drive, which is a new, secure USB 3.o drive.

You are a hero(ine).

It is now possible to completely secure your portable thumb drives. Two different products do this in two different ways. The drives aren’t cheap, but neither are you, right?

The first kind of drive secures the data with software; the second with a keypad that is actually on the data stick.

Truly secure thumb drives come with a level of encryption that will render the drive inoperable if tampering is detected.

Software-based secure thumb drives use apps that match up the portable drive with the host computer. This is the less expensive option, but will only work within the limited range of operating systems provided in the apps—generally, just desktops and laptops, at this point. They can be faster than the keypad-based variety.

App-based secure thumb drives are manufactured by a range of companies, including Ironkey, Kingston, Kanguru, SanDisk, and others.

Ironkey by Imation has generally been reviewed very well, although it only works on Windows computers. Kingston is also well-reviewed, and a little less expensive than Ironkey.

Depending on how much storage and what level of security you want, these drives can range from a little over $100 to around $400 for enterprise-level security in a 128 gb drive.

Thumb drives with keypads are a little larger and more expensive, but much more secure, than drives that rely on software for their security.

Aegis (by Apricorn) and Toshiba make such drives.

The Aegis drive requires a passcode of 7-16 alphanumeric characters, along with a lock/unlock button. It has military-grade encryption, and is immune to the Bad-USB exploit. The 240GB version retails at $369.

The Toshiba has the data itself encrypted on the drive, as well as the alphanumeric keyboard. Unplugging the drive automatically secures it. Ten wrong passcode tries disables it. It comes in a 32GB maximum size, which retails for $200.


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