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Biometric Thumb Drives?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the portable-data-storage-with-a-twist dept.

osopolar asks: "I work as a security analyst for a 10 billion dollar bank and we are currently looking for biometric thumb drives as emergency backup/recovery solutions for our local branches. We do not have IT people at every branch so the backup must be done by a branch manager, so the device needs to be easy to use. How would you backup information securely? What thumb drives do you recommend?"

2 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. er... by fiddlesticks · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You work for a '10 billions dollar' business that can't afford enough IT staff in its branches and gets hardware recommendations from 'ask slashdot'?

    --
    http://milkshake.dexy.org
  2. Other Suggestion by Vandilizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fist off asking slashdot is a fantasist idea you might get an off the wall idea as it to follow or just some good general advice. Being vague might just be a problem with and NDA. Paying some one or going only with in your own department you are only going to get what is familiar, which is not the best answer.

    Now as for the biometric key drives in personally research they do not provide enough protection to secure such data.

    What I would suggest is just a portable USB hard drive. With all the data encrypted using a key generated from the unique serial numbers on the computer and an additional random generated number stored on a key such as this one (http://www.marx.com/en/products.php) or just any public key, each branch could also have one key with the privet key to decrypt the data in case they need to recover it locked in a vault preferably requiring at lest 2 different people to access this key since (if you are in a bank as you say this should not be that hard to arrange) they would never need this key unless they were doing a recovery and you could also key one at a central site incase of an unforeseen events or not, but I suspect if they ever loses theirs you would just replace the entire set (though you would have a much bigger problem on your hands I would think).

    Seeing as there small key has 4kb of storage using a large key with AES (probably SHA-512 or again what ever tickles you) would keep your data pretty safe or at lest the government would think so.

    The only other thing I would recommend in keeping 2 backups in 2 completely different locations, people do walk off with stuff, or more politely they misplace things.

    Hope this helps or gives you some ideas, I am just babbling a little from things I have done. Post if you have a question or want to strike up a conversation.

    Injoy