Over the last few years USB Flash Drives have become a must-have item for computer users everywhere. We rely on them to transport all kinds of data including letters, spreadsheets, presentations, music and even movies. The capacity, physical size and speed of these drives has increased rapidly, and with that prices have come down making them an affordable accessory rather than luxury item. They have now completely replaced the humble Floppy Disk as the dominant format for re-writeable, portable storage, and rightfully so - Floppy Disks were well past their sell-by date at the turn of the 21st century.

But there are some risks associated with such a small device capable of storing vast amounts of data being kept in the pockets and on the key chains of millions of workers at companies/organisations across the world. Let's take a look at some of these risks in detail.

The first risk is a loss of productivity; workers could use their USB Flash Drives to bring in software that is not suitable for the workplace, such as games or "joke" applications that could cause disruption. Employees could also use the fast internet access usually provided in the corporate network to download illegal or unsavoury material onto their USB Flash Drives that could damage the company's reputation and potentially cause spyware or adware infections.

The second risk is of workers bringing viruses, trojans, malware or adware into the workplace on USB Flash Drives. An example of this would be an employee with poor security on their home computer bringing a file he/she has been working on at home into the workplace on their USB Flash Drive and plugging it into a company machine. This could expose the corporate network to all kinds of viruses or malicious code that may have been transferred on the USB Flash Drive from an unprotected computer.

The third and most serious risk is the theft of confidential data or "data leakage" as it has come to be known. There have been many cases in the past where workers are given access to confidential information and abuse their position by copying sensitive data onto a USB Flash Drive. If this data is later leaked, it could cause embarrassment to the company involved with the possibility of negative press coverage, and they may even be subject to legal action. There is also the possibility of a USB Flash Drive containing confidential information being lost or misplaced by accident. A worst case scenario would be a USB Flash Drive dropping out of the pocket of a worker when out on their lunch break; this could mean a database with thousands of records of private information falling into the hands of unscrupulous people.

There is now a solution to the problem of data leakage - a USB Flash Drive with strong 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption. The SanDisk Cruzer Enterprise, available from Lucid IT Security, is the answer IT professionals needing to protect information on company-issued USB flash drives have been looking for. It is specifically designed to meet the unique USB security, compliance and manageability needs of enterprises. Rather than rely upon users to secure files, it imposes mandatory access control on all files, storing them in a hardware-encrypted, password-protected partition.

The Cruzer Enterprise is also the first secure USB flash drive to fully support Apple Mac OS X computers, and can be initialized from either a Macintosh or a Windows computer. By supporting both Macintosh and Microsoft Windows environments, IT professionals can more effectively use SanDisk Cruzer Enterprise to protect information on company-issued secure USB flash drives across their organizations.

Server-side software is also available to manage the Cruzer Enterprise drives - SanDisk CMC (Central Management and Control) adds a higher level of control to Cruzer Enterprise. It centrally manages the drive's complete lifecycle, from initial user-deployment, through password administration and data backup, and finally to drive termination if lost or stolen.