From Computerworld:
USB flash drives are very small, very portable, very convenient — and very easy to lose. In fact, the question to ask these days isn’t how to avoid losing your flash drive, but how to make sure your data is safe when you do. As a result, Computerworld decided it was time to look at seven USB flash drives that are outfitted with security features to keep your data safe.
We did what most IT managers and users would do and asked some of the top vendors for their most secure USB flash drives. All but one of these products use some form of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption, either 128-bit or 256-bit (according to experts, there’s not much of a difference between 128-bit and 256-bit levels of AES encryption for ordinary purposes, as neither has yet been broken).
There was some variation in the implementation of the encryption on these drives — some use AES keys derived from a user’s password, while others use encryption keys generated by a hardware-based random number generator.
Our three reviewers — Bill O’Brien, Rich Ericson and Lucas Mearian — did not test the encryption algorithms themselves (that’s a subject for another article), but did test the drives’ performance, I/O rates, and CPU utilization.
Read on for the full piece. (thx. Ben)
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[tags]Secure Storage, Secure Data, Data Security, USB Drives[/tags]