From the common or garden USB key to the external hard drive, personal portable storage is the indispensible, must have accessory for today’s peripatetic worker... and a growing concern for cost, reliability, and security conscious IT departments.

If there was ever a clear sign of a technology gaining true mass market appeal and indispensability, then the USB key’s appearance on every set of car keys in the land (alongside
staples like the Tesco Club Card), must surely be it.

In reality however, the USB drive is really only the tip of a huge and fast-expanding personal
storage mountain, featuring all manner of small but powerful removable storage products.
According to the recent personal storage survey from analyst IDC, the most popular remains the CD or DVD writer, with almost 31% of business users and over 45% of consumers citing this as their top choice. Second was the USB flash drive at 17.3%, followed by the external hard drive at 15.6%. Network storage, floppies, tape, and secondary internal hard drives all finished in single-digit percentages. However, to debate which device is best or otherwise is to overlook the bigger and more important point – personal storage at large is more popular, ubiquitous and varied than ever before.

According to Andrew Cowling, Marketing Manager at Fujitsu UK, it’s all being driven by the increasingly aggressive push towards not just personal mobility, but business mobility. “Now, with mobile working becoming the new buzzword for productivity, the demand for portable storage devices is growing. The trouble is knowing what to look for.”

It’s a familiar mantra where business mobility is concerned – with every freedom, goes great responsibility... not least for the put upon IT manager charged with managing costs, ensuring reliability and maintaining security. As such, says Marije Stijnen, Director of Corporate Marketing with Tandberg Data, personal storage is on many levels, a lot like dating, “Storage seekers, like people going on dates, are often faced with uncertainties; challenges like projecting ongoing capacity requirements. Both are often left second-guessing decisions they make along the way: Did I make the right choices? Should I revisit things at some point? Is there a way I could have done it more efficiently?”

The first concern – surprise, surprise – is security. “The biggest risk with removable devices is that generally the data stored on them is not encrypted and is accessible without a password”, explains Ed Jones, Managing Director of Thinking SAFE. “Lose it and it’s the same as leaving
your laptop on a bus already logged in for anyone to use. These issues apply to all removable media, without exception.”

What you do about it, he says, depends on the value of the information being stored, and at
the nub of it all are two questions. Why am I making this copy? Is there a better way?

The problem is, says Matt Fisher, VP of Centennial Software, that personal storage too often slips under the business’s radar; the copying of data onto personal storage devices is often barely even noticed, much less questioned. “Recent data breaches in both the public and private sector highlights a fundamental problem”, says Fisher. “Many organisations are not taking the issue of data security seriously (and) are placing themselves in an even more vulnerable situation – without even realising it – by using unprotected portable devices.”

“This is particularly imprudent given that technology now exists that allows companies to constantly monitor all portable device connections and data traffic, allowing organisations
to lock down unauthorised USB file transfers.”

Encryption also minimises the risk of information falling into the wrong hands should a device get lost or stolen, says Fisher, but despite it often being a simple, quick and cost effective solution, it doesn’t seem to be happening as a matter of course.

Cowling similarly cautions against falling into the common trap of seeing personal storage devices as secure purely because they’re portable; just because you carry them with you. All businesses employ data security in the form of anti-virus software, password protection and
so on at the desktop, he says, so why wouldn’t they make sure data on portable hard drives is also secure?

Kirsty Miller, European Flash Product Marketing Manager at Kingston Technology, echoes the
urgent need to put appropriate policies and processes in place to control the use of personal drives. She suggests that firms should stipulate and ensure that employees only use secure, encryption-based drives, and that (when it comes to USB drives), that they should consider
standardising on a single product.

“By standardising on a single USB product, companies are able to effectively manage both static and mobile data security and ensure compliance with schemes such as the Data Protection Act. If it needs to be transported, data should be put on encrypted USB drives and all third party couriers should be vetted first. The storage device containing the data could also be electronically tagged whilst in transit so that if it is stolen it can be located.”



Among the most recent developments is the introduction of 256-bit AES encryption, the same
as used on many secure websites to vouchsafe credit card payments. “Not only would it take a hacker more than a hundred trillion years to crack the code”, explains Miller, “but those particular drives will completely erase the stored data after a number of failed login attempts.”
However, prior to providing any kind of portable storage to employees (and most especially allowing them to use their own), businesses should review their overall security policies, she

Usage also depends on the type of user, of course, says Miller. “Businesses that require storage of high resolution digital images and videos, for instance, should consider using CompactFlash (CF) or Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) flash cards depending on the format supported by their devices. Both offer higher storage capacities and faster transfer speeds. Mobile users looking to increase the storage available on their mobile devices meanwhile, should look to microSD flash cards or similar smaller formats. Whilst capacities are still increasing this is a relatively low-cost and lowpower consuming option to utilise all the functions that the mobile device offers.”

Utilising the increasing number of functions now offered by mobile storage devices themselves is equally important, says Miller.

“The USB key is no longer just a way to transfer data. Technology advances have created high-performance drives and a variety of features from software and hardware functions built into the drives. Options include being able to take your desktop wherever you go – available software can copy email content, Internet favourites, settings, history and cookies, plus files and folders. This means that the drive can allow the user to replicate their own desktop on virtually any PC. And all data transfer is handled on the drive so there are no traces left behind once it is ejected from the non-host PC.”

The increasing flexibility of emerging form factors is another key factor, says Stijnen. “Some vendors, for example, have developed disk-based, removable storage systems with portable hard drive cartridges that can be used to quickly add storage to any PC or network.

The interchangeable cartridges, which come in 40GB, 80GB, 120GB, 160GB — and now up to a beefy 300GB capacity — offer a rugged design that is shock-proof for protection of personal and business data even when outside of the drive bay.”

Last but not least, of course, comes the question of cost – something businesses should avoid obsessing about, says Miller. “Businesses should avoid the desire to focus on price alone. It’s easy for some manufacturers to hide poor quality components beneath the plastic shell of a Flash card or USB drive. A ‘simple’ Flash card actually contains sophisticated designs and advanced components.”

Guy Bunker, Chief Scientist at Symantec, also believes that there are issues just as crucial as cost. “Look for security and reliability. Check for quality of build and how susceptible it is to failure having been dropped. Look to see if there’s built in encryption or authentication – e.g.
using a thumb print. If not, can a software solution be applied to it?” Like Jones though, Bunker
believes that that the big question has to be ‘why?’ Why does the user really need the device? Will it create more problems than it solves? Could there be a better way? Accustomed and happy with their key rings just as they are however, users will likely take some convincing.