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I spent a long time making the decision to buy a IronKey Personal D200 8GB USB thumb drive and I'm happy I did. First things first - if security is not a concern then this is not the thumb drive for you. You can get a cheap USB thumb drive for a fraction of the cost. My favorite cheap alternative is the Kingston Digital 8 GB USB 2.0 Hi-speed Datatraveler Flash Drive DT101G2/8GBZ, Red. But if security is a concern then read on...
The IronKey thumb drives work flawlessly on Windows, Mac, and Linux. If you're a frequent traveler who doesn't always travel with their own equipment or if you have different platforms/OS at work and at home then this is an important consideration. For me, personally, a thumb drive that didn't have cross-platform security features would be useless.
All of the encryption is handled on the drive itself in Hardware (you can read about the technical details on IronKey's website) so nothing is transferred to the host PC and that makes it less vulnerable to attacks. This may not sound like a big deal but google "secure usb memory hacked" and read some of the stuff you find. The IronKey drives are FIPS 140-2 Level 3 Certified. Most of the competitors seem to be level 1 or level 2 certified. Level 3 adds requirements for preventing access to the cryptographic secrets held within the module.
It's well-built and waterproof so it should stand up well in physically demanding environments (like your pockets). It self-destructs after 10 failed attempts so you can be pretty sure your data is safe. And when I say self destruct I really do mean that. It's not usable at all and you'll have to buy a new one to replace it. I think the Basic model may offer a reset option instead but I'm not 100% sure.
Ironkey offers a couple of different models the Basic and the Personal and each comes in a D and S variant. The S has SLC Flash Memory while the D has MLC Flash Memory. SLC Flash is faster, will last longer, and has a wider operating temperature. For consumer use and better value the D variants seem to be perfectly fine.
The Personal and the Basic are identical except for some extra software that is available for use on the Personal on Windows only. These include programs for:
-Support for using the Ironkey as one of the factors for VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP). If you've used an RSA SecureID token then you're familiar with the process. Companies like Geico, eBay, Paypal, T-Mobile, AOL, and others support VIP. The list isn't huge but hopefully it'll keep growing.
-A portable installation of Firefox so that you don't leave any traces on the host computer.
-IronKey Identity Manager which is a local program that manages passwords. (Like Keepass or Roboform)
-IronKey Secure Sessions (an IronKey fork of Tor anonymizer which uses IronKey private servers) for use with the onboard Firefox. It's free for the first year.
Overall I couldn't be more pleased. I was evaluating the possibility of finding a drive with biometric (fingerprint) support but they seemed to be either too expensive, too flaky/unreliable/gimmicky or both.
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Product Description
Ironkey 8GB Personal D200 USB 2.0 Flash Drive D2-D200-S08-2FIPS USB Flash Drives
Product Details
- Brand: IronKey
- Model: D2-D200-S08-2FIPS
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .12 pounds
Features
- Personal D200 8G Secure Flash Drive protects data with always-on hardware-based encryption
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