The company has applied the same principles as on its encrypted USB drives

Jul 19, 2013 13:08 GMT  ·  By

Government, military and healthcare organizations can have really stringent security guidelines, some even going as far as to ban use of all flash drives and other removable media, at least personal ones.

For those that can't go so far, due to practicality, or lack thereof, things like encrypted hard drives, flash drives and memory cards are mandatory.

A secured hard disk drive unit is precisely what Apricorn has just formally launched, called Aegis Padlock Fortress.

The drive has a larger than necessary case, because it needs to protect the drive and hold the retractable USB cable on top of that.

More importantly, it uses Secure PIN Access – the drive can only be recognized by your computer's OS after the correct 7-16 digit number or word has been entered via the numpad on the case.

Also, the padlock gets Military Grade AES-XTS 256-bit Hardware Encryption, which protects the data even after the drive is removed from the enclosure.

Seeing as how the drive can have up to 1 TB capacity (a lot of potentially sensitive documents and videos), that's important.

FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validation is another asset, exceeding 11 cryptographic security metrics (essentially, it is one of the most secure USB 3.0 drives on the market).

"When designing the Aegis Padlock Fortress, we wanted to create a drive that not only met, but exceeded the strictest security requirements set by the US Government, and our FIPS validated drive does just that," said Mike McCandless, VP of sales and marketing.

"But this drive is more than that. As a part of Data Loss Protection (DLP) strategy, the Fortress provides hardware based authentication and encryption that couldn't be simpler to employ. To prove this, our corporate evaluation plan works with businesses to show just how easy this drive is to implement into their security policy."

Apricorn's Aegis Padlock Fortress secure USB hard drive is up for order at $349 / €266 – €349. There are SSD models too.