Protecting valuable data on mobile devices

By Dale Taylor (Intel) (46 posts) on September 8, 2009 at 12:34 pm

How many of us have important data on a USB memory key right now?  Is your data protected?  What if you lost that memory key?  I lost a very small multi-Gb key a few months ago and was comforted knowing that I had taken security measures before that happened.  Fortunately I found the USB device a few days ago, it had slipped down between my drivers seat in the car and the center console (I was lucky to see it before the vacuum consumed it).

With so much valuable information stored on USB and other portable memory devices, protecting that data becomes an important and necessary task.  I use a program called TrueCrypt which can be found here: http://www.truecrypt.org/

This program enables you to create either an encrypted partition on your drive, or the easiest is to create a file which is then mounted as an encrypted drive when you run the TrueCrypt software.  The software is free, open source and supports AES-256, Serpent and Twofish encryption algorithms.  I’ve found it to be easy to use and reliable.  Once you have the device mounted you have easy access to your files and can move copy etc just as if it were a regular drive.

I format and use the memory key as a regular Fat32 USB device with files on it.  I keep a folder with the TrueCrypt files so I can easily move into that folder and run the TrueCrypt program.  You have to determine in advance how much room you’re going to allocate to storing encrypted data and format an encrypted file for storing the data before you can use it.  Once the setup portion is done, accessing the data is simple.  You insert the key, run the software, mount the encrypted drive and off you go.

A nice feature when storing your important files encrypted this way is that by making a simple backup of the encrypted master file, you have backed up everything you keep within that file.  The backup file is also mountable and works just like the original, it does not have to be on the memory key to be used.

One warning… DO NOT forget your password or you’ll be in a world of hurt, because you can’t recover your data without it.  I prefer to use a nice long password, a sentence actually, knowing my data is very secure.

Give True Crypt a try, and if you have software you find useful in protecting your data, post a comment with some information about it.

 

Categories: Cool Software, Mobility

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