Secure USB Drive

Do you really know how many people are using USB flash drives in your organisation? Don’t worry if you’re not sure - a majority of IT professionals are equally uncertain.

Our April 2008 survey found that 77% of corporate end users had used personal USB flash drives for work purposes. Yet IT managers estimated that just 35% of their workforce used personal drives. So how do you bridge that security gap, and protect the sensitive business data on flash drives? Here are our top 10 tips.

1.USB Security Policy

Clearly communicate your company policy on USB security, and ensure staff know the policy and buy into it. Find out exactly how many drives holding company data have been lost or stolen over the past year, so you can understand the scale of the problem. In our survey, 44% of end users said that their company didn’t have a policy on copying business data to personal flash drives. And 23% said they didn’t know the company policy on flash drive use.

2. Get Secure USB Drives

Back up the security policy with company-issued secure USB drives. Be clear what data can and can’t be copied to drives, and on procedures for lost or stolen drives. Also get each employee to sign a copy of the policy before giving them a drive.

3. Use Strong USB Encryption Engines

Make sure the company’s secure flash USB drives are fully encrypted, to protect data against loss or theft. The encryption should be as strong as possible. Currently, a 256-bit AES algorithm is the highest encryption level that’s commercially available.

4. Automated Data Encryption

Automate the USB encryption, to ensure that users cannot forget to secure data, or try to get around it. People make mistakes, or assume it’ll be OK just this one time if they don’t encrypt. Automated encryption on the flash drive protects users - and your data - against those risks.

5. USE Hardware Encryption instead of Software Encryption

Use hardware USB encryption, not software, for data integrity and performance. Hardware-based USB encryption does not require driver or software installation on the host PC, stopping threats such as cold boot attacks, malicious code and brute force attacks, and makes usage easier.

6. Audit Data Trails

Keep an audit trail of data and files that are copied to the company flash drives. The management software for your secure flash drives should provide this information. According to our survey, data copied to a flash drive included customer records (25%), financial information (17%), business plans (15%), employee records (13%), marketing plans (13%) - so you need to know what data is being used, and by who.

7. Data Restoration and Recovery Ability - A Must

Have the ability to recover and restore data that resides on the secure flash drives. If a drive is lost, it’s useful to be able to re-provision the data and drive. The management software for your flash drives should enable this.

8. Remote Termination - This USB Drive will self Destruct in 5 Seconds…

Have the ability to terminate lost or stolen secure USB drives. It may sound a little “Mission: Impossible”, but the ability to kill a missing drive after a period of time adds an extra layer of protection to sensitive data.

9. Obtain a Centralized Management Console

Make sure you can centrally manage all drives, with granular control. You need to be able to update your secure flash drives, back-up data on them, reset passwords when users forget them, control use of flash drives in unauthorised PCs, and more from a central console.

10. Integrate The Secure USB Drives with an Anti Virus Solution

Make sure the secure flash drive solution you choose can support other security applications. For example, onboard anti-virus scanning, to stop known and unknown threats from entering and spreading via the secure flash drive, or user authentication for secure remote access applications. Features like these help to futureproof the solution you choose.