How To Secure Your Thumb Drive Data
3
Comments
With the minuscule sizes of thumb drives also comes a higher risk of losing them. Not one who is normally clumsy or likely to lose things, I have come close to losing my thumb drive a few times. Some days, I think it’s not just a matter of if I lose it but when. The smaller they are, the easier it is to steal/conceal too. Which means, it is more and more important to secure your thumb drives. 
Just because we don’t have mission critical data on there doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. For example, I would hate to have photos of my children fall into the wrong hands. Yikes!
You can start off by simply purchasing a secure thumb drive. Drives like Ironkey comes built in with military grade encryption key. The data will self-destruct if a brute-force attempt is detected and even comes with a backup service. Starts at $79. Sandisk and Kingston also offer secured USB drives that start at a lower price. Ironkey however looks like they are top of the grade.
Another way is to install encryption software onto your existing drive. Truecrypt and DiskCryptor are two free ones you can use. These allow you to encrypt folders, the whole drive or part of the drive and save some cash. There are drawbacks to these software based options. For example, you may need to have administrator rights for any computer you plan to use the drive on. You may also be required to install the software on any computer you wish to use the drive with. For some this may defeat the purpose, but if you’re simply traveling from one place to another e.g. office to home where you have full control of both computers. This will definitely work.
If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:
- Recovering from Data Loss in Your Home Business
- Alexa Gives Us More Stats and Data to Play With
- The New Nimbus Cloud Computer is Free. Yep, F.R.E.E.
Get Your FREE 21-Page Internet Business Idea Guide
Enter your name and email below and we’ll send you our unique 21-page guide chock full of Internet business ideas – for free! Your information will be kept private, of course.
Jim Pearson has spent more than 25 years helping small and mid-size businesses find solutions to their business problems. He specializes in sales, marketing and rapid revenue growth and has helped hundreds of companies make more money.
Gene Culver has more than 15 years of diverse business experience across the music industry, telecom network marketing and business coaching. His specialty is helping individuals with marketing, their internet presence and lead generation.
My biggest concern with these thumb drives is keeping them organized and handy. I’m thinking about using a key chain to handle them all.
Hi Sugar, a Keychain is a great idea
Hi Lyn,
Whichever way you use, its better to take the needful protection of drive & data than to crib about it later, for sure.
I completely agree with you, Lyn.