Toshiba Encrypted Flash Drive – Security Comes at a Steep Price
You will agree with me on the point that data storage has progressed to another level and now you don’t worry about the storage capacity of your laptops and personal computers as you know that you are going to need a secondary storage for sure and with growing cloud based platforms. it is very important for people to understand what will be next in storage options. There are effective services like Dropbox and OneDrive to store your files and save them from fires, floods and all types of disasters.
What is Toshiba Encrypted Flash Drive?
Toshiba recently launched an Encrypted Flash storage device because everyone does not have the access to a cloud storage and there are certain businesses where cloud storage is not possible but still the data needs to be secure, steps in Toshiba’s Encrypted Flash Drive. What is the idea behind the encrypted flash drive, you may ask? The reason behind this is that a flash drive is pretty small and can get lost or misplaced easily, so if there is no encryption the data gets stolen and sometimes there is no backup too. The technology behind the Encrypted Flash Drive is AES 256-bit encryption.
Features, Cost and Availability
Toshiba’s Encrypted Flash Drive is available in 4GB, 8GB, 16 GB and 32 GB as of now and these drives are priced at $95, $112, $140 and $200 respectively, pretty high for a flash drive. What do you think? Security comes at a steep price.
The flash drive uses a built in mini keyboard to access the data, authentication and to recharge the battery by plugging in the USB port. The user just need to enter their PIN and plug in any USB 2.0 compatible device. Soon, the access is granted and the drive unlocks the media. When you remove the drive from the laptop, the drive automatically locks the data. Pretty cool. These flash drives are available to buy, you can google a store near you.
These highly secure flash drives do cost a lot and I believe that once other companies start making these drives, the competition will kill the prices and they will go down soon, but at the moment one might think that they are insanely priced. So, if there is a high profile data like documents worth thousands of dollars or blueprints of the army, these drives are really worth using but if you just want to transfer a movie or say note down a few recipes, then it is a royal waste of money.
If the flash drives get stolen, these devices are equipped with Brute Force Hack Defence technology which will erase all the data after 10 unsuccessful consecutive attempts to enter the PIN.
Future of Encrypted Flash Drives
Everyone deserves the most important security for their files but the pricing is what is the low point for an average user. These drives will be a hit at the enterprise level. The design of the drives is pretty smart. The data gets destroyed after 10 unsuccessful attempts to unlock the drive might be a disadvantage sometimes. These drives will be compatible with Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, Mac OS X 10.6,10.7, 10.8 and 10.9, Linux and a few embedded systems.
If you have any information about the encrypted flash drives or if you are curious to discuss about the future of these drives, do not hesitate to mention it in the comments section below.
Dhruvil is a Writer & Marketeer for Nimblechapps, joining December 2014, based out of Sydney, Australia. He has worked briefly as a Branding and Digital Marketing Manager before moving to Australia. At Nimblechapps, he worked on Social Media Marketing, Branding, Email Marketing and Blogging. Dhruvil studies Business at University of Western Sydney, and also handles Operations for the company in Australia.