14 DAY TRIAL // USB flash drives are usually pretty unassuming, both on the inside and on the outside, but some of them go far above and beyond the norm, or rather their makers do. Kingston is one such maker.
To make a long story short, Kingston has launched two new flash drives that are more or less unmatched in terms of security.
They are called DataTraveler Vault Privacy 3.0 (DTVP) secure USB Flash drive, and DataTraveler Vault Privacy 3.0 Anti-Virus.
Both of them look the same, save for what's written on the side. They have blue cases (Kingston blue as it were) and caps that can be mounted at the back end of the units while in use.
The only difference between the newcomers is that the DataTraveler Vault Privacy 3.0 Anti-Virus gets ClevX DriveSecurity powered by ESET anti-virus protection (ESET's NOD 32).
That said, both Kingston flash drives come in 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB capacities, each with different performance.
It all boils down to how many NAND chips are included (the more there are, the higher the total data transfer speed becomes).
Since this is USB 3.0 we’re talking about, the read speed ranges from 30 MB/s to 250 MB/s, while the write speed goes from 12 MB/s to 85 MB/s.
More importantly, there is very little chance of anyone unauthorized getting to your private files, not just because of the security features mentioned above, but also because of the way the drive locks down and reformats after 10 intrusion attempts.
Password protection is included too (and passwords need to be complex), as is the possibility to customize password length, maximum number of attempts, preload content and internal/external serialization numbering.
Sadly, Kingston did not include prices in its press release. They're bound to be high though, in the hundreds of dollars/Euro.