- Linus tech tips best drive encryption software software#
- Linus tech tips best drive encryption software free#
- Linus tech tips best drive encryption software windows#
Linus tech tips best drive encryption software software#
Recently, a potential security hole was discovered in the drives from all three vendors – but that was primarily due to poor coding of the software counterpart. Ironkey – Enterprise, Personal & Basic seriesĪmong these, the drives from Kingston, SanDisk and Verbatim have been awarded the FIPS 140-2 Level 2 certificate issued by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which validates the USB drives for use with sensitive government data.Kingston – Data Traveler Elite / Enterprise family.Some of the vendors offering hardware encryption based USB Flash drives are: But then again – “Better safe than sorry”. This effectively counteracts any brute-force cracking attempts, although you can give up all hopes of recovering your data. The drives also sport automated self-destruct systems that securely wipes out data on the encrypted partition after a certain number of attempted break-ins.
Linus tech tips best drive encryption software windows#
Note that the authentication software (in most cases) is Windows compatible only! Hence, on other platforms (Mac, Linux etc.) your encrypted partition cannot be accessed.Įven if you ever lose your USB stick it will take someone with a very powerful computer at least 100 years to decrypt the data using brute force? The whole process is transparent to the end user and doesn’t cause any noticeable loss in data transmission speeds. This authentication mechanism is where the software part comes into play. To access this special partition one needs to provide a password. All data flowing in and out of the latter is encrypted / decrypted on-the-fly using AES-256 by an encoder chip (hardware) built into the flash drive. These drives come with two partitions – a normal partition for publicly viewable data and an encrypted one for all your sensitive information, with the ability to set the size of this partition (as a percentage of the total flash drive capacity) at will. For most part, these devices are targeted towards the SMB (Small and Medium Business) and Enterprise market.Īlthough dubbed “hardware-based encryption” these flash drives employ a dual layer of software and hardware to secure your files. To begin with, hardware-based data protection systems (for flash drives) aren’t all that prevalent yet with not many viable (read inexpensive) options for the mass consumer market. In each case, portability is the key criteria, as that’s what USB drives are for.
Linus tech tips best drive encryption software free#
This article attempts to provide brief overviews of the most well-known ones with an emphasis on those which are free and readily available to everyone. Good news is that there are numerous commercial and free / opensource solutions (both software and hardware based) to securing your flash drive data.
Both TechRepulic and PCWorld provide lengthy discussions on the kind of damage such an action may cause to an organization. What’s worrisome is that the data on an average flash drive is grossly unsecure and can prove to be a tremendous source of data leakage both from the personal front and an organization network if the drive falls into wrong hands.īecause of their tiny sizes these devices are prone to being lost or misplaced or worse yet – easy targets for thieves. Not only they are dirt cheap, they provide substantial storage, making them extremely handy tools for carrying around large amounts of data, including personal and official information of sensitive nature. USB-based flash drives are a part and parcel of everyone’s life these days.
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