How do you protect your USB drive data?

[Edmond Dantes]

few weeks ago I lost my USB on my way to work. Hours later a colleague tapped me on the shoulder and gave me the USB he had found at the entrance of the building where I work. He'd plugged the USB drive in and found a passport photo of me, which obviously confirmed I was the owner.

I usually don't store much information in the USB, but had stored the passport photo there for something I needed to do recently. But you may easily store more sensitive data. How do you protect it?

do you use any tool?

 

[The Y-man]

I use Truecrypt (freeware) on my usb and laptop disk drives.

http://www.truecrypt.org/

The Y-man

 

[Aaron_C]

This isn't really related to encrypting data - but you should buy one of those micro USB devices and then attach it to your keys so you don't lose/forget it. http://www.verbatim.com.au/en_AU/pr...s/44050/store-n-go-micro-usb-drive-black-16gb

 

[Aaron Sice]

i just dont carry them around.

i carry my laptop instead. ive learned from losing stuff too often that the chance of losing something is inversely proportional to its size.

its pretty hard to leave a lappo lying around.

 

[The Y-man]

i just dont carry them around.

i carry my laptop instead. ive learned from losing stuff too often that the chance of losing something is inversely proportional to its size.

its pretty hard to leave a lappo lying around.

You would be shocked at how many people we have coming into the office to report their laptop has been stolen (usually from car) or lost (hotel lobby, airport, etc)

Our corporate laptops now carry Macafee Endpoint Encryption
http://www.mcafee.com/us/products/data-protection/endpoint-encryption.aspx

Corporate USB sticks are now encrypted and has an auto wipe function if 3 attempts are made with the incorrect password (don't try getting to your documents after having a few!!)



The Y-man

 

[redwing]

You would be shocked at how many people we have coming into the office to report their laptop has been stolen (usually from car) or lost (hotel lobby, airport, etc)

Our corporate laptops now carry Macafee Endpoint Encryption
http://www.mcafee.com/us/products/data-protection/endpoint-encryption.aspx

Corporate USB sticks are now encrypted and has an auto wipe function if 3 attempts are made with the incorrect password (don't try getting to your documents after having a few!!)



The Y-man

Is this with the Macafee product?

 

[devank]

I replaced my small USB keys with dropbox. For big files (say more than a 2G) I use the external hard disk which doesn't need external power.

 

[Edmond Dantes]

I replaced my small USB keys with dropbox. For big files (say more than a 2G) I use the external hard disk which doesn't need external power.

I don't think that works without internet conectivity, does it?

 

[BMan]

some portable hard drives (ones that dont need power) have an encryption thing already on them just depends what one you get

 

[devank]

I don't think that works without internet conectivity, does it?

Absolutely... I assumed everyone has decent internet connection everywhere in Sydney

 

[jaycee]

i just dont carry them around.

i carry my laptop instead. ive learned from losing stuff too often that the chance of losing something is inversely proportional to its size.

its pretty hard to leave a lappo lying around.

ummmmmmmmm

 

[Aaron Sice]

You would be shocked at how many people we have coming into the office to report their laptop has been stolen (usually from car) or lost (hotel lobby, airport, etc)

Our corporate laptops now carry Macafee Endpoint Encryption
http://www.mcafee.com/us/products/data-protection/endpoint-encryption.aspx

Corporate USB sticks are now encrypted and has an auto wipe function if 3 attempts are made with the incorrect password (don't try getting to your documents after having a few!!)



The Y-man

my laptop never leaves my right hand when im out, except for swapping over to the left to shake hands.

 

[The Y-man]

Is this with the Macafee product?

No.

http://www.integralmemory.com/product-categories/encrypted-usb-drives

The Y-man

 

[quoll]

Most of the large orgs and gov depts only buy phones that can be remotely wiped when lost or stolen.

Only issue I heard of was a senior exec with iPhone and iPad, lost the iPhone but the remote wipe utility wiped his iPad as there was no way of splitting the apple products it was all or nothing so Lost iPhone was wiped which was good but iPad was wiped which exec was using, haaahaa

Really was funny at the time.

Win7 comes with Bitlocker, think it's only Enterprise version so win7 home and other version probably need a 3rd party product.

Cheers
Graeme

 

[RedPanda]

I used to use USB drives before. Quite often I'd forget to disconnect and take it home and have sync issues.

Then I tried emailing myself docs (only practical for office docs).

I tried dropbox but then found a better solution. Google Docs with Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. Again only practical for Office documents. You open the document or spreadsheet from the Cloud and it saves automatically to local computer. If you open a file from local computer it automatically saves it to the cloud so you can access it from anywhere. No sync issues. I still use dropbox and USB drives for bigger folders.

 

[wealth]

http://www.kingston.com/us/usb/encrypted_security

 

[CaliPops]

When out and about I keep it in my bra ...

 

[twodogs]

my laptop never leaves my right hand when im out, except for swapping over to the left to shake hands.

And shake other things too I guess....