Hardware Based USB Disk Encryption
USB drives are not only used for the personal files that you choose to carry with you. USB files are also used for important, confidential work documents and family information that could be dangerous in someone else’s hands.
That is why it is incredibly important for anyone that carries confidential documents and other pieces of information with them in a USB drive to consider some type of file encryption – whether the file encryption be hardware or software based – in order to ensure that no one is able to access the restricted files.
Hardware Based Disk Encryption
Hardware based disk encryption is arguably the strongest way to encrypt your USB drive. Built with materials designed specifically to prevent breaking into its data, encrypted USB drives are virtually unhackable, with safeguards in place that guarantee that no one can get into your files, from the curious pedestrian to the skilled identity thief. Hardware based disk encryption, unlike software, is hard wired into the system. Therefore, an individual who hopes to access the files has to do more than simply run a few bots to try to crack a password. They literally have to take the flash card out of the USB drive and mount it to a machine of their own creation, where they still cannot make copies and will continue to risky either frying the files or failing to unlock the password. For the high end hardware encrypted USB drives, there are additional safeguards in place, including smart chips that prevent flash drives from being removed by wiping the data clean, and hard drives set up in such a way that the flash cards will damage if taken apart.
Brute Force Attacks
All USB encryption comes these days uses a top of the line encryption program known as AES (advanced encryption standard). The only way to break this type of encryption is to have the algorithm attacked simultaneously by thousands of computers, each trying to come up with a different password in order to break the code. This type of hacking is known as the “Brute Force” method, and it is the only way to open up AES encrypted files.
Hardware disk encryption is less susceptible to this type of attack. Because the encryption files are on the hardware and not the software, hackers are unable to download the algorithm off of the USB drive and run the program separately. If a hacker hopes to run the brute force attacks on a hardware encryption, they must run it off the USB drive itself, which is a near impossible task.
Also, the best USB flash encryption is equipped with locking and deletion procedures that run off a separate and irremovable second chip, so that if a password is entered too often, all of the data is deleted and written over so that it cannot be restored.
When storing only personal files from home, a software encryption method could easily be enough to prevent any unwanted attacks on your data. But for business with sensitive and confidential information, a hardware based encryption platform may be the best choice for you.