Fujitsu's secure USB tech keeps your data from wandering off (or just plain deletes it)
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted April 17th 2009 1:03PM
posted April 17th 2009 1:03PM
With corporate espionage on the rise, you just cannot be too careful, right? We've all heard the horror stories: Someone takes a spreadsheet home to do a little number crunching on his personal PC and, next thing you know, some ne'er-do-wells in Tehran have the specs for the President's personal helicopter. Well, the brain trust at Fujitsu Labs has put its collective heads together and come up with a pair of new technologies aimed at preventing sensitive information from getting into the wrong hands. First, the "secure USB memory device" is a thumb drive containing a processor and a battery. Data security policies can be set to delete data after a specific period of time or if the drive is accessed by an unauthorized computer -- handy if the thing gets lost or misplaced. Second, the company's "file redirect technology" restricts the data to the USB memory device itself, or to a specified server. The company is currently conducting internal trials of the technology, but we'll let you know as soon as we see one of these bad boys in the wild.
[Via Akihabara News]
[Via Akihabara News]
Well if it's all just flash + a seperate MCU, it wouldn't be too hard to just transplant the flash to another board and then just read it, no? Sounds a little extreme, but if this is really being directed towards the government sector, especially for high security data, that seems like a big hole in the security. If it's a SoC, then I don't have any qualms with respect to effectiveness.
If they're smart the insides will be filled with epoxy. I've got a better idea, don't allow thumb drives.
Data is probably encrypted also.
I know when I worked with secret or higher computers in the military, the drives were removed when we went home at night and stored in a safe. External drives were a huuuuuge no no.
We know barry#, we all bought them on ebay or afghan yardsales and saw all the files.
And to shamowfski, never assume these things, it's probably not encrypted and you can remove and reinsert the battery to reset it so it's all readable.
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Maybe the drive is that size because of the processor and battery. If not, then congratulations to Fujitsu for nailing down one of the first aspects of thumbdrives that make them a security nightmare: the size. No-one's going to bat an eyelid at someone walking around the office with one of those in their hand, unless they shouldn't have it in the first place...
My secure corporate machines (not the Orangebook NSA devices) don't even have USB ports. Pretty soon they won't be PCs - going back to terminals.
PS/2 keyboards? And mice? They don't even sell those any more do they? PS/2 mice
Yes, they still make PS/2 mice.
In five seconds this laptop will self destruct.
Explosives provided by Sony™