The Long Climb

USB Pen Drive Security

Posted on 20. Nov, 2008 by Mike Halsey in guides and how to's, security

It doesn’t matter how careful you are, USB pen drives are still very small and easy to lose.  Only last week I managed to lose my pen drive only, and with some considerable relief, to find it a few days later under a pile of laundry.

We hear all the time about laptops, USB pen drives or external hard drives left in taxis, on trains or in cafes by careless government and corporate workers.  Worse, because of the sensitivity of such news in corporate markets, experts believe that this is less than a quarter of the number of actual causes of data loss through carelessness.

If you lose your pen drive you’re not only losing the device itself, but all the files and data stored on it.  On my pen drive is stored financial information (though this was already password protected) along with software registration and licence codes that could have caused me a considerable headache if they’d found their way on-line, and numerous personal files including a copy of my home insurance policy in case my house burns down when I’m out.

Needless to say the shock was all the reason I needed to put a password on every file I need to have on the drive.  This is easy to do if you have a Word document or a spreadsheet.  When the save File dialog pops up there will be a Tools pull down menu, in which you’ll find the password protection settings under General options.  Other software packages including Adobe Acrobat have password options too.

Failing this you can use software such as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) to encrypt files.  There are a great many solutions out there and your pen drive may even have come with its own security software.

In addition to this, Windows 7 includes an extension on their Bitlocker security software called Bitlocker to go.  This will allow you to encrypt the contents of pen drives and external hard drives, though you will be limited to which computers you will be able to read them on.

My tip of the day, learn from my mistake.  If you already have some encryption software you like or that was provided with your USB pen drive or external hard disk, use it.  Alternatively if you store valuable Word or Excel files then use Word or Excel to password protect them.  Keeping yourself safe is very easy to do and the peace of mind that goes with it is priceless.

Did you find this interesting? If so, please it with others, or

about it. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Tags: extermal hard disk, laptop, pen drive, security, usb