14 DAY TRIAL // Addonics might have just launched the most effective and also most convenient solution for securing data stored on external media via the AES 256-bit encryption standard.
We've seen our share of so-called secure storage devices, each flaunting either the AES 128 or the AES 256-bit encryption standard.
Most are too expensive for common consumers to bother with them though, which means that students and every-day citizens carry unsecured flash drives or optical disks in their pockets.
Addonics' CipherUSB solves the problem by performing the encryption whenever data is written on a flash drive, USB hard drive, Blu-ray didks, CDs, DVDs, external HDDs/SSDs or memory cards serving USB-connected cameras and such.
The way the CipherUSB works is quite straightforward. Buyers have to just plug it inside a PC's USB port (we even mistook it for a flash drive at first) and then connect the storage device to the other end.
We'll use an USB stick as an example. Say a student has to prepare some documents for his or her end term project or something of the sort, but doesn't want anyone to access them.
The CipherUSB is plugged in, then the flash drive is plugged in its rear socket. After that, the user just needs to do the standard copy + paste action.
No software needs to be installed. Upon passing through the CipherUSB, the data is automatically secured in military grade AES 256-bit hardware encryption via a FIPS certified crypto engine.
Later on, the files will be visible to a computer's operating system only if the CipherUSB is there.
This does make one wonder about what will happen if a different person tries to access the data using a different CipherUSB. The product page says that “the encrypted data stored in the disc can only be accessed with the correctly coded CipherUSB in place,” so we suspect that only the drive that did the encoding can decode the files afterwards.
Addonics is already shipping the CipherUSB, for $29.95 / 24.20 Euro.