14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that the public demand for secure data storage solutions is high enough for companies to launch what are now known as “secure flash drives” on a regular basis. There have been quite a number of such releases over the past months, most of which used similar means to achieve their intended purpose of safeguarding data, namely hardware encryption. One of the latest devices revealed to be in the making is the Xporter Bolt from Patriot Memory.
Secure flash drives are mostly used by business users that need to take along work data, but can also serve particularly careful consumers. In such cases, of course, there is the need for a storage device capable of safeguarding the trade secrets housed inside.
This is exactly what encrypted hard drives are designed to do, provided they do not possess security flaws the likes of which was found not long ago in the encryption protocols of products from Verbatim, Kingston and SanDisk, among others. In this case, the Xporter Bolt makes use of 256-bit AES encryption.
The new gadget from Patriot Memory is programmed to initiate forced and complete data deletion in case a wrong password is introduced consecutively ten times. This will make sure that strangers won't be able to get a hold of the data. Of course, consumers should still avoid making enemies, because vengeful or particularly unreasonable people may choose to introduce a wrong password ten times on purpose in order to destroy the otherwise useful data.
As far as actual specifications are concerned, the Bolt operates on the USB 2.0 interface, weighs less than 10 grams and has read and write speeds of 27MB/s and 13MB/s, respectively. The device will come in storage capacities of 4, 8, 16 and 64GB, at prices ranging between 32.99 and 321.88 Euro.