1. How to completely protect your USB?
As more and more individuals and enterprises are emphasizing on the importance of data
security. Password protection technology has become a hot topic nowadays. Today, I'm going to
show my own opinions about a variety of data protection methods based on my experience.
Part one: Protect your USB from being accessed
There's a kind of products that aims at protecting external hard drives, such as USB flash drive,
pen drive, memory card, thumb drive etc.This kind of encryption products is designed for
password protecting files stored in flash drives. USB encryption products can be divided into
encryption hardware, encryption software and encryption method built in Windows OSes.
1.
Secure data with USB encryption hardware.
The first one is just a kind of special USB flash drives with built-in fingerprint processing
technology, some USB encryption hard drive allows owner to set several admin fingerprints and
user fingerprints. In addition to the fingerprints identification, the USB encryption hardware
provides second layer of protection---you can set password for the USB. However, the price of
this kind of hardware is a little bit high. Maybe you will say that it's worthwhile for data security,
while what if you need many these USB flash drives? That would be a significant amount of
expense.
2.
Protect USB with bitlocker
Bitlocker drive belongs to the second classification; it is free to encrypt external hard drives in
some Windows OSes. Bitlocker is able to protect hard drives from physical access to the drive.
That's to say, if someone take your hard drive from you and connect it to another PC trying to
2. access the data in it, the Bitlocker will make the drive unreadable. This function adopts 128 bit or
256 bit encryption technology, which is strong enough to protect the data stored in computer
and USBs. What's more, it's completely free. However, it has many shortcomings, for example: it
can only be used to lock the entire hard drive; and time needed for encryption is depends on the
memory space, it's generally very slow. And there's another problem, Bitlocker drive isn't
supported by all Windows operating systems, Windows 7 Professional, Windows Vista Business
Edition and the Home Editions do not include BitLocker.
3.
Protect USB by TrueCrypt
Regarding to USB encryption software, there’re many such kind of programs on the Internet.
TrueCrypt is freeware and you can follow the tutorial on the site to learn how to use it. As its
description on the site, there're only four requirements for you to complete the USB encryption:
a computer with a USB port, a computer with a Windows operating system, a user account with
'administrator' rights, a USB stick. However, I have to say that the process of whole encryption
with this program is too complex. Nowadays, people are all searching for tools that are effective
and easy to install and use. I just try to lock my flash drive with it once and then have no interest
to use it again. Concerning this point, Kakasoft USB security is better than it. It's easy to install
and easy to use, you can complete encryption in several steps. This software is able to lock
individual files in USB, while it can't prevent others storing files in the USB flash drive.
4.
Protect USB by hiding in partition
And there's another way that can be found on the Internet---creating a hidden partition on USB
flash drive to hide all files. Actually, this method is useful for people to backup files so as to avoid
unintentionally formatting data. If you want to password protect files stored in the USB flash
drives, you need to use another encryption program to set a password for it.
Part two: Protect individual file or folder in USB
1. Manually protect each file
3. Sometimes we often need to share our files in USB with others. However, we may store some
files that we don’t want others to view them. In this situation, what should we do? In fact, some
files have built-in password protection function, for example, word, power point, excel, etc.
which allow you to save them with a password. Of course, the secure level of this kind of
built-in protection is not that high; some programs even don't have this function, such as picture,
software and so on.
2. Protect folder on USB by Kakasoft folder protector
Regarding to the problem above, I choose to adopt folder protector software to protect individual
files in PC or USB flash drives. In order to protect different forms of documents in one time, I put
them in one folder and encrypt the folder with this software. However this software can only be
used in Windows operating systems.
Conclusion:
There are always many topics about data security, and there are always many solutions to data
leakage. Data security is not only a problem of enterprise; it's also a problem of our individuals.
How to find out an effective data encryption program that is suitable for us? In my opinion, try
and test are necessary; besides, searching relevant knowledge on forums and collecting others
advices will also help you a lot.
I am a technical writer from Kakasoft which is a leading provider of computer protection software.
I always care about data safety in our daily life, such as USB security, password protect folder and
so on. Welcome to exchange views with me.
