The GUARDIAN does not use the host computer for authentication

Jan 15, 2010 15:54 GMT  ·  By

Not too long ago, a critical security flaw was found in the encryption and password protection technology used in a number of USB flash drives. More specifically, a fair amount of USB flash devices with built-in password protection and data encryption were discovered vulnerable to hacks that could completely compromise all of the data stored on the devices. DRAM and Flash memory maker EDGE Tech Corp. has come out to reassure its customers that its GUARDIAN flash drive does not possess this vulnerability.

“We spent a great deal of time developing the GUARDIAN, and carefully considered important product attributes not limited only to encryption, but overall architecture, which certainly includes password authentication,” Jeff Thompson, EDGE Tech’s president and CEO, said. “The GUARDIAN does not use a host computer for password authentication, which is where our competitors’ products are vulnerable. Instead, the GUARDIAN uses device-level password authentication, totally avoiding this vulnerability.”

Among the drives that were found to possess the weakness were devices from Verbatim, SanDisk and Kingston, with the latter having already started a replacement program for its susceptible DataTraveler models. A more fortunate company was Kanguru, whose Defender Elite was proven free of the flaw. Like the latter, EDGE is quite glad to give this piece of good news to its customers, especially considering that, when the GUARDIAN was launched, it was described as the company's “most powerful and secure product to date.”

“I’m happy to be reiterating that statement now,” Thompson said. “Our quality and product development teams created one of our best products ever with the GUARDIAN, and we’re very pleased that we can offer that assurance to our customers today.”

End users interested in additional information on the EDGE GUARDIAN USB flash drive may find it on the official product page.