Good enough for us.Īny remote wipe scheme is going to have to involve some way for the USB device to connect to the internet and get a remote wipe signal. So while we can't remote wipe them, they have strong encryption, and if someone tries to crack the password, it bricks itself. But there is still the 2nd level of protection - the encrypted IronKey can be set to self-destruct its memory chip after X failed password attempts. We have folks in the field without connections quite often, so we can't use this feature.

This means that if the user doesn't have an active internet connection, there is no way to get to the files on the IronKey. You can set them up so that they can be remotely wiped, but in order for this feature to function, it has to phone home for either the OK or remote wipe signal before you can unlock (decrypt) its contents. The IronKey (we use them in our enterprise) has two levels of protection.

A laptop with Prey or LoJack or similar products can similarly just be kept off the internet until it's been mined and reset the only way it can be tracked or remote wiped is by contacting the mothership via the internet, so a smart crook would just keep it offline. In the smartphone example, a thief would simply put it in Airplane Mode until they've mined all the data from the device.

On an IronKey, you can set it to phone home before unlocking (decrypting) for either an authentication or remote wipe signal. On a smartphone/tablet using ActiveSync, when it tries to sync with the Exchange server, you can tell the device 'no mail for you, do a factory reset on yourself instead'. In order to do remote wipe on any device, the device has to 'phone home' to get the wipe signal.

Iron key thumb drive