All about securing your files on USB drive

We all have files and folders that we don’t want others to look at. These files could be financial documents, images, videos or some other questionable material. Nonetheless, one thing is obvious, they should be secured and password-protected. You can certainly take that data, put it inside a USB device, but it won’t be secure. USB drives have been all the craze recently, in fact there are a cult following for novelty USB drives, they have been designed to look like sushi rolls, body appendages, teddy bears, fruit slices and other funny looking things. They also make a popular promotional item, often handed out for free on tech conventions, most of these USB drives (handed out for free) contain the promotional material on the company trying to promote their brand and services.

However, according to internet security experts, USB drives are a data security nightmare. To understand why, we need to first discuss their aesthetics and capabilities. These devices are reusable & rewritable that are only a few inches long, approximately 1-4 inches – they plug directly into any USB port and can transfer large chunks of data in a matter of few minutes to few seconds. These devices are also popularly referred to as USB flash drives or thumb drives. To make them attractive to users, they are reasonably priced for the amount of data they can store, some can hold the capacity to store several gigabytes, sometimes ranging upward to 20 gigabytes.

However, their biggest attraction is also their main weakness – being portable and small in size. Consequently, this means that if the user ends up losing their device – and if that device just happens to contain sensitive information – then that information can potentially fall into the wrong hands. Say for example, an aeronautical engineer has schematics on new aircraft technology saved on a USB drive, if he or she ends up dropping this USB drive, say it falls out of his or her pocket, then there’s a 50/50 chance that the schematics information can end up in the wrong hands. If someone intends to sell this information to potential competitors or a foreign country, they could do so without repercussions.

Then, it’s no surprise when security experts claim that data is becoming the new ‘currency’ for e-criminals. Despite this alarming trend, users still fail to take adequate steps to secure their data on USB drives. Many feel that their chances of becoming a victim are either too low or can’t afford to secure USB drives they own. Nonetheless, there’s a solution to the latter, and it comes in the form of Lock USB. Lock USB has been developed with proprietary data locking technology that prevents hackers from accessing the locked data inside. What’s more, it’s the only USB locking software on the market that has cross-platform locking. This means that locked data inside USB drives cannot be accessed on any operating platform. For example, once the data is locked from a Windows computer, the USB device can be plugged into a MAC, but that data will not be accessible. Accordingly, this form of protection is only available in Lock USB.