Some Secure USB Flash Drives Not So Secure

ITBusinessEdge: Some Secure USB Flash Drives Not So Secure

Entrusting your small business’s vital data to an encrypted USB flash drive might not be such a great idea – unless you pick one like IronKey that avoids the mistakes made with hackable (and now recalled) SanDisk and Cruzer products.

“In the past year, many vendors have rushed onto the bandwagon to produce secure USB flash drives, which promise to protect the data stored on them with robust encryption. Ostensibly, the only way to access the encrypted data would be to supply a password to the flash drive, with the authentication performed through a software applet launched when the flash drive is plugged in.

I would like to urge caution when shopping for a secure flash drive for your SMB, though. You see, many of them might not be truly secure.
In fact, flaws were discovered by German penetration testing firm SySS on some USB drives made by SanDisk. This triggered a recall of products such as the SanDisk Cruzer Enterprise USB flash drive, models CZ22 and CZ32, among others from the same company. Certain products from Kingston Technologies, which security experts say uses SanDisk software in its products, were also affected and recalled. You can read more about the details of the recall here.”