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USB flash drives have become a hugely popular way of carrying data around. Unfortunately, they are pretty easy to misplace and it could bite you in the ass if a drive with sensitive data was lost or stolen. Some flash drives come with software to password protect the drive but most don’t. With Windows 7’s ‘BitLocker to Go’ feature, it’s now become very easy to encrypt and secure your flash drives with the click of a button. The feature is not perfect as there are some compatibility issues with older OS such as XP but all in all, it’s a pretty handy feature to have.

The process is fairly straightforward and simple. On a Windows 7 system with BitLocker, all you need to do is to right click your flash drive on My Computer (Or is it just ‘Computer’ now) and hit ‘Turn on BitLocker’. A series of dialog boxes that pop up will guide you through the process which includes setting up a password. Once you encrypt a drive using BitLocker, you will be prompted for the password to unlock the drive every time you plug it in.
BitLocker To Go would work pretty well between Windows 7 systems but if you plug an encrypted drive into a Windows XP/Vista system, things could become quite painful. On these Operating Systems, the drive would work on a read-only mode; you’ll be able to copy files off it but you won’t be able to write to the disk even if you do provide the password and unlock the drive. Additionally, you won’t be able to launch files by double clicking them – they will first need to be copied to the hard disk and then run.
But as long as you use the flash drive between Windows 7 machines, none of the above annoyances will bother you. If you are planning to use your pen drives on machines running XP/Vista, ‘BitLocker To Go’ may not be an ideal solution. But if you primarily work with Windows 7 based PCs, it could prove to be a pretty decent encryption tool which will enhance your data security.

If you use a USB flash drive or a portable hard drive, you are likely to have come across viruses that spread via such media. I’ve had many experiences with these pests - no matter how good your anti virus software is, some of these just manage to penetrate all shields to bite you in the ass. And when one of them does, all your portable media are at risk of getting infected– it could be your flash drive, portable hard drive, your phone’s memory card, your digital camera’s memory stick, etc. If you are annoyed by viruses that spread via USB based removable media, here’s a security solution you can try. USB Security Utilities is a free set of tools that can safeguard your portable storage media from viruses, trojans and other malware (and it can be used with your resident anti virus scanner as well).

USB Security Utilities uses several layers of protection to ensure maximum security for your media. First and foremost it uses good old virus signature based scans to look for most common viruses that spread via USB devices – these scans have to be run manually – this software does not have a memory resident scanning module. Additionally, it scans for techniques commonly used by most viruses such as an exploited autorun.inf file or executables placed inside every folder and subfolder of the drive. USU can also protect your data by immunizing the portable device using it’s ‘Vaccine’ tool (this will prevent suspicious files from being copied to your USB).
All of this functionality is integrated into a single, easy to use interface. Note that the program may switch to Spanish on first launch – to change interface language to English, switch to the rightmost tab and hit the ‘English’ button. Also, I noticed that it does not place a desktop or a start menu shortcut – you have to run the exe from the install location to run in.
Download
You can download USB Security Utilities from the official download page. The tool is free and does not include any form of adware.
[Click Here] to download the latest version of USU. The page is in Spanish, but the download link should easily be identifiable.