• Security

Your key can be an invaluable aid to keeping your data secure, you can carry it with you always safe in the knowledge that it is password protected, the popular Truecrypt allows you to set up secure folders on your key that are only accessible by you to store this data. With full encryption to DES standards this can be serious about security of your information. But for it to operate there will be some registry traces so it's not a completely transparent solution.

Lockngo is another utility offering similar facilities with similar encryption of your data but also has the ability to securely erase the contents of the drive if you so wish.

If you need more security than this there is always the hardware option of a USB drive with an integral biometric fingerprint reader. Of course you pay for this, quite literally, in the upfront cost of the device but how secure do you need to be.

Aside from all of the advantages afforded by the portability of a flash usb device you may wish for security reasons not to allow your computer users the ability to upload / download files or run applications on the machine and maintain a closed system. In that case there are few solutions without diving into the registry or the creation of user profiles and so on. However there is one of many solutions from Smartline that is able to monitor and/or restrict access of the USB port to your machine.

At last there is a virus scanner to fit on your stick. Portable ClamWin is a Free Antivirus package that is specifically for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003. It has a graphical user interface for Clam AntiVirus software, it benefits from regular updates and the ClamAV team regularly updates the virus databases to include a new virus/variant immediately after it appears. It is a standalone virus scanner so does not include an on-access real-time scanner, in other words it waits to be run. So you have to manually scan a file in order to detect a virus or spyware. Consequently scheduled scans and updates have been disabled as they are not relavent. It's an ideal package to add to your utility and security software toolkit.