Password Protect USB Flash Drives

USB plays a very important role in our day to day life. They have become one of the best and a bit reliable storage medium. The storage capacity also keeps increasing ay by day which helps us to store more data. They are so widely used that you can even carry a large file or any important data in your pocket. No need to carry laptop for any data. USB drives and pendrives have been an essential part of life. But in all this we forget one thing that is security. You carry many important data and files whenever you go for some work. But what if the pendrive is lost or stolen. Your important or any confidential data can be in wrong hand.

What if you password protect your pendrive or USB drives, using which only are authorized to access. We have seen post related to USB's like, Clear USB traces from registry, Remotely lock your pendrive. But there’s a solution to this, password protection! You can simply password protect USB flash drives so that only you or authorized users can access the data. Protection can be done using two methods. One, in which data cannot be seen without entering a password and the ohter in which the data is actually encrypted and can be decrypted and accessed only with a password.

Following are some tools which supports both this methods;

1. TrueCrypt (Discontinued):

TrueCrypt is software for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data is automatically encrypted right before it is saved and decrypted right after it is loaded, without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. Entire file system is encrypted (e.g., file names, folder names, contents of every file, free space, meta data, etc).

Note that TrueCrypt never saves any decrypted data to a disk – it only stores them temporarily in RAM (memory). Even when the volume is mounted, data stored in the volume is still encrypted. When you restart Windows or turn off your computer, the volume will be dismounted and files stored in it will be inaccessible (and encrypted). Even when power supply is suddenly interrupted (without proper system shut down), files stored in the volume are inaccessible (and encrypted). To make them accessible again, you have to mount the volume (and provide the correct password and/or keyfile).

2. USB Flash Security:

USB Flash Security is a software that can provide your USB flash drives with protection, by encrypting them.
Since this is an ad-supported product, you should pay special attention when installing USB Flash Security. It automatically makes some changes to your web browsers, unless you switch to custom installation mode.
The interface of the program consists of a standard window in which you can select an available USB flash drive and press the "Install" button.

So, you can add a password and optionally a hint. But you can also enable the program to encrypt (AES256) the "Protected area".
All in all, USB Flash Security provides a simple and effective solution when it comes to password-protecting your USB flash drives. We strongly recommend it to all users.

Download USB Flash Security

3. Encrypt Stick:

Encrypt Stick™ turns your flash drive into a private vault where you store any file you want to protect. Files can be photographs, music, video, .pdf, Word, Excel, .exe and all other file types. You can create encrypted and hidden "vaults" on virtually any writable media including Mac, PC, shared network drives, external hard drives, additional USB flash drives and SD memory cards. More media types to come.

Encrypt Stick™ dynamically sizes your vaults so that a vault only takes up the space it actually needs for storage of your sensitive information. Vaults are visible only to you and remain hidden to anyone using your computer who does not have your password and Encrypt Stick™ enabled flash drive.

Download Encrypt Stick

4. USB Secure:

A protection application for all types of portable media including USB flash drives, thumb drives, memory sticks, external drives, and memory cards. Data protection is PC independent and does not require installation and any administrator rights at the other end.
USB Secure does not install any kernel or filter drives, taking away the hassle of requiring administrator rights to password protect portable devices.

Protecting your sensitive data with USB Secure is a one-click process, requiring no lengthy installations. Access to your protected data on a portable drive is convenient too. You can choose to open and browse your data sets or simply explore as read-only.

Download USB Secure

There are many other tools available on the internet. This are something which i found as useful. You can pot for any other or can suggest any some other tools in the comment section.

Cheers!!!