Addonics CipherUSB dongle is a unique spin on the old problem of security vs. ease of use. If a security protocol is too much of a hassle to use or requires complex passwords, the average user simply will
not use it. The
CipherUSB, on the other hand, offers AES 256-bit level security without the owner having to do much beyond plug their drive, whether it be a
Blu-ray burner,
flash drive or
portable hard drive, into the dongle and then plugging this combination into a free USB port. The CipherUSB itself essentially does all the work of encrypting and decrypting the attached drive without authentication software nor any user interaction.
With no passwords to forget and no possibility of "lead pipe cryptanalysis" being able to work on you, your data is very safe. In fact, there not only is there no password to remember, there is not traces of it left in your PC's memory for hackers to snoop. If the CipherUSB is not used with a given drive, it simply appears as an unformatted or blank device. So in the event you do misplace your discs or drives, anyone finding it will not be able to access any of your data. Then again, losing the CipherUSB also means you will lose the only key to your content on the drive, but that is the price of ease of use.
If you are even more paranoid, you can daisy chain multiple of the CipherUSB's together increase the encryption level; albeit at the expense of ease of use and increased complexity. With a MSRP of only $29.95, the CipherUSB should offer you peace of mind if you can live with the fact that it is limited by USB 2.0 interface.
