Mobile and Secure.Com

Engadget has a review of a new external SATA hard drive case that uses RFID to activate an encryption mechanism to encrypt/decrypt the contents of the drive in order to protect your data from potential theft.

This seems like a weak form of security to me personally, because no matter how strong the level of encryption is, the key to unlocking it is a physical object that you have to carry with you at all times in order to use the drive.

So all a thief needs to do is to steal both the drive and key fob (assuming they are after the data and not just the hardware) or clone the RFID device (as demonstrated in a recent episode of Tiger Team).

A quick read of the manufactures product description and a read of the FAQ also tells us that as long as you have one of the two key fobs supplied with the drive, they can make you a copy should you lose one.

Should I lose one? If I lost one I’d probably want a new encryption key, not a copy of the one I’ve already lost and that could be in the hands of someone waiting for the chance to grab the drive.

The concept is interesting, but using RFID seems a little bit ‘gimmicky’. The technology was designed for identifying objects rather than as a wireless decoder key.

How do you secure the data on your portable storage devices?