Thumb drives are a convenient and cool way to carry around your data, and with drive sizes in the gigabytes, you can store a ton of photos, files, music, and video in a very tiny space. Unfortunately, due to their small sizes, they are targets for information thieves.

Think about it - all that personal data - your resume, email, password-files, and pictures of your girlfriend (wink) can be picked up and copied and returned before you even noticed it was missing. You want to have this data handy, but handy for you and not for that scumbag down the hall with the sticky fingers.

Like you, the US Military wanted portable but secure storage, and the guys at IronKey stepped up. They've developed the perfect solution that's one-part thumb-drive, and two parts Mission: Impossible. Their thumb drives hold up to 8 Gigabytes of data, but includes a hardware encryption chip that scrambles the data so as to be completely unreadable without a password.

Passwords can be hacked, but not the IronKey. It's built to withstand attacks both virtual and physical. 10 incorrect password attempts, and the encryption chip self-destructs, making the contents of the flash drive totally unreadable. The contents of the drive are filled with epoxy, so if a hacker tries to physically access the chips, he'd more likely damage them instead. Even if he did get access to the memory chips, they'd be worthless without the encryption chip. Electron-shielded, even a scanning electron microscope can't get inside.

Applications built right onto the IronKey help keep your personal data safe. For example, the password manager keeps your passwords safe. How? Your passwords are securely stored in a hidden hardware-encrypted area inside the device (and not in the drive's file system), being first locally encrypted with 256-bit AES, using randomly generated keys encrypted with a SHA-256 hash of your device password. All of this data is then doubly encrypted with 128-bit AES hardware encryption. Hack that.

A secure copy of Firefox included with your IronKey encrypts your browsing session through a VPN tunnel to IronKey's Secure Sessions Service. It works by tunneling your entire web browsing communications through the Tor-based Secure Sessions proxy on your IronKey. The Secure Sessions tunnel connects over an encrypted connection to their network routing servers, which in turn route your traffic between a number of servers, and then eventually out to your destination website. This approach protects your identity and your confidentiality, encrypting and anonymizing your Web surfing on almost any network or VPN (virtual private network).

These drives have already seen duty in Afghanistan, keeping US Military secrets safe from unsavory people. They're certainly good enough even for your most sensitive data.

All this goodness is demoed here. Go check it out!

IronKey - The Bottom-Line

• Fast 30MBPS Read, 20MBPS Write
• Drive contents encrypted with AES CBC-Mode Encryption
• Onboard IronKey Password-manager keeps all your internet passwords safe
• Secure version of Firefox included that encrypts all your web-surfing traffic
• Encased in a potted metal case, not plastic, making it one of the strongest USB keys around
• Exceeds MIL-STD-810F military waterproofing standards
• The encryption chip self-destructs if an invasive attack is detected
• If your Ironkey is lost, you can restore from a secure backup to a new Ironkey in minutes
• Dual channel SLC NAND Flash for high-quality and read/write speeds
• Works great in Windows XP and Windows Vista, Linux and Mac OS X. Linux and Mac support requires Windows initialization, first.
• Sorry - due to export restrictions, we cannot ship outside the US and Canada.