Protect Your USB Drives NOW!
When I bought my first real computer, it came with a whopping 20 MB hard drive. This nicely held the operating system, my office applications, and all of the data that I required for regular use. I even got a few games on there.
Today, the smallest USB drive that I have will hold 32 MB of data and it is almost considered to be useless because it holds so little data. My regular USB drive that I use for day to day storage is a 4 GB drive with more than enough room to handle several applications, my development environment, and all the documents that I can generate.
And I am not alone in ownership of a USB drive. Everywhere you look, these things are showing up. Most people have at least one, many (like myself) have several.
But, while these devices are extremely convenient and allow you to keep your files with you, how safe is your data on them? What are you doing to keep them safe? I have a few ideas on the subject…
What’s The Big Deal?
I always have to laugh to myself whenever I talk with people about keeping their USB drives safe. I often hear, “I don’t care if I lose it because they are so cheap. I’ll just buy another one!” It is very true. I typically find that USB drive prices drop by about 50% year over year. That means that you will be able to buy an 8 GB drive a year from now for the price of a 4 GB drive today.
But, the real issue isn’t the cost of the drive, it is the value of the data on the drive. And when you put data on a USB drive, you take some very real risks with that data.
Risk #1: USB Drives Are Easy To Lose and Steal
One of the biggest advantages that USB drives brings, i.e. its small size and portability, can also be a huge disadvantage. When you can fit entire encyclopedias’ worth of information on a small device, it is pretty attractive. But such small devices are also really easy to lose or lose track of.
Just imagine how often you have lost your car or house keys, pens, sunglasses, wallet, etc. You think, “No problem! I’ll just go buy a new one,” but in this case, the keys would never open your car or house, the pen would not come with ink and you couldn’t buy any, the sunglasses would come without lenses, and you would never be able to replace the credit cards or ID cards in the new wallet.
This is essentially what would happen if you lost your USB drive.
Not to mention, they are really easy to steal. It only takes seconds for someone to palm a USB drive and slid it into their pocket.
Risk #2: USB Drives Fail
I make a point of replacing my primary USB drive every year because I know for a fact that there are a finite number of times that you can write to a USB drive. There are also defects, physical wear and tear, accidentally dropping it in a blender (OK. So it’s an iPod. But you can use it like a USB drive.), etc. Just because there are no moving parts does not mean that there is nothing to break.
Risk #3: Data Gets Into The Wrong Hands
How excited do you think your boss would be if your company’s competition got your USB drive that had a file on it called NextYearsCompetitiveAdvantage.doc? Corporate espionage is a huge business and some people would just love to get their hands on your easy to snag USB drive.
Protect Yourself
Since there are some pretty obvious reasons to keep your USB drive and its contents safe, let’s look at some ways that we can do just that.
Backup Your Data
If you are not backing up your data, you are just begging for disaster to come and bite you on the butt. This information needs to be backed up just the same way that you backup your My Documents, e-mail, and your favorites.
Probably the easiest way to backup your USB drive is to use a folder monitoring and synchronizing tool. One of my favorites is FileHamster. Not only does it copy all of your files to your hard drive, it monitors file changes live so they can be copied immediately. Plus, it will create file versions so that you can look at different version of your documents while you work.
Encrypt Your Data
Now that you have backed up your data, you are no longer worried about not having your data available. But what about the data that is still on your drive. If someone stole it, they can still see all of the data.
This is why you need to encrypt the contents of your USB drive. There are several ways that you can do this. Many USB drives come with software that will encrypt the contents. Other drives use biometrics to lock the drive so that you need a fingerprint to access the data. Either will suffice for what you need.
If neither of these are an option, I would suggest using something like TrueCrypt to lock down your data. I use this exclusively on every USB drive with vital information on it. I would suggest that you create an encrypted volume in a file rather than encrypting the entire USB drive. This way, you can create some customizations on the drive if you want and still encrypt the data.
Make Your USB Drive Hard to Lose/Steal
Because USB drives are so small, they are very easy to lose or steal. Put in place some measure that will make it more difficult to lose or steal. Some ideas include:
- Use the lanyard that came with the drive
- Clip it to your keys (just don’t lose your keys)
- Keep it in the same spot all the time
- Attach a motion sensor to it
- Clearly engrave your name on it
- Mod it so that it doesn’t look like a USB drive
Granted that some of these may be a bit extreme but it all comes down to how important is your data to you?
Regularly Replace Your USB Drives
To help avoid those nasty drive failures, I strongly suggest that you replace your drive on a regular basis. How often you do this really depends on how much you use the drive but a good rule of thumb is to replace your drive every one to two years. (The way I remember to do this is by buying myself a USB drive birthday present each year!)
Conclusion
If you have a USB drive and you are not taking steps to protect its contents, it is not a matter of if something goes wrong, it is a matter of when. Don’t get caught unprepared. Protect your USB drives NOW!
5 Responses to “Protect Your USB Drives NOW!”
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Dreaded Purple Master Says:
November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 amNow that USB drives (or flash drives, or thumb drives, or whatever you want to call ‘em) are so ubiquitous, inexpensive, and small, we have to face facts: The cost of losing one is not the cost of replacing the drive, but the consequences of losing the data it contains. Daily Show: ‘Don’t they know we’re all recording this stuff?’ The truth about doctors. “For a new patient, I book it for 40 minutes. Some doctors make it ten. For a second visit, some make it five. If you’re an HMO doctor, the network will tell
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The Fieldhouse Says:
November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 amTo wind up security week, I though that I would just highlight some of the security related articles that I have written in the past so that you may stumble on something interested that you may not have read before: FOSS for SecurityProtect Your USB Drives NOW!E-Mail TracksSecurity Is About Being UnattractiveI Think I Have A Virus: Now What?Tech Blog of the Week: Schneier on SecurityA More Secure Home WiFi DesignThe Anatomy of a VirusHigh End Router, Low End Hardware
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Brian Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 8:28 pmTim,
You continue to impress me with your posts. I just started messing with USB drives this year. After “discovering” all the useful things I could begin to do with it, I came across your blog with your 32Mb USB competition.Each time I read one of your posts, I learn something new… and I’ve been in the computer repair business for four years, and working with computers for a long, lone time (1972).
Thanks! Keep up the good work, and the excellent advice!
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Lou Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 6:36 amThanks again for a well-written, easy to understand article. As the sole IT person for a small company, I make it a point to visit sites like your for tech news that I can actually put to use AND afford! Living in the isolated environment that I do, there are no colleagues to bounce ideas off of, no mentor to learn from, no higher power dictating how things will be done. I rely on the internet, your site, and reading as much as my eyes can handle to stay current with technology and trends.
USB drives are a major concern from a company standpoint. I would love to see any article or articles about USB drive security in the corporate environment. What options are out there? What might be considered ‘industry standard’? How can employees use of USB drives be restricted but somehow still not stifle work flow?
Thanks again for your site and knowledge.
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K-IntheHouse Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 8:02 amI use a 2GB USB drive and cannot live without it anymore! But, backing up is one thing I have been lazy about. I’ll give File Hamster a shot and hopefully will get into the good habit of syncing all the data into my desktop which needs to be backed up to an external drive and that’s a whole another story!
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Joe Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 3:26 pmI figured out my USB drive system last year. I use my it to shuttle data between my desktop and laptop. Rather than running programs and accessing documents off the USB drive, I have a full synchronized directory of the drive on each machine. I almost always work from the hard drive, and I synchronize the USB drive with SyncBack each time I sit down at either machine and again before I leave it. I have an AutoHotKey script running that makes the synchronization a snap: it polls the current drive labels for the label I gave the USB drive; upon finding the drive, it runs the Syncback profile, then waits for the drive to be removed and re-inserted before it runs the profile again.
It took awhile to lock in the habit, and I did get confused a couple of times when I forgot the drive and later had to sync changes from both machines. However, having 3 copies at all times means I don’t have to worry about making other backups.
Unless, of course, I bring my laptop home and my house burns down…
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Jonny Robert Says:
June 17th, 2007 at 2:51 amI really like this guy Tim who wrote this article, what ever he said is so true. People sometimes take the USB drives for granted because they are so cheap, light and small. I see on my regular day life even at work, people just miss using their USB drives, throwing on their table, as if nothing will ever happen to it. But I too had to learn from my bad experience, I lost 2 USB drives one got damaged, just stopped working and the other, I lost it on a taxi. But now, I try to take good care of my USB drive. Now, I work for a reputable fingerprint technology company called M2SYS Technology, so I am really into this fingerprint technology stuff, so I even got a USB drive that uses fingerprint identification option and helps secure my USB because I carry on it everyday very important data and classified informations at home and work.
