datAshur Pro+C 256GB – The Crème De La Crème of Hardware Encrypted USB Sticks

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Category: Technical Product Reviews

Published: 01 May 2025

Manufacturer: iStorage UK | Model: IS-FL-DA3C-256-256 | Origin: Greenford, England
Website: www.istorage-uk.com | Price: £213 on Amazon

Simplicity	Value	Documentation
5/5	4/5	5/5
Functionality	Performance	Overall
5/5	5/5	96%

What Is It In Under 20 Words?
An USB stick with inbuilt encryption & authentication to protect data stored on it.

What Does This Solve?
Everyone will remember the stories of London Heathrow airport losing an USB stick or HMRC via a contractor (Atos). These stories were some years back, but I am sure it still happens and USB sticks, normal ones have become cheaper & faster over the years. For statistics around MoD device losses see: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/hundreds-of-electronic-devices-lost-or-stolen-from-mod/.

The earliest USB sticks only held 8MB of data which could store a few documents or a smaller number of photos. These days £12 gets you 128GB of storage which can gobble up the entire contents of your My Documents folder in minutes. USB sticks are small and can be lost in seconds without the owner noticing. Everyone can afford to lose £12 but what about the contents on it?

iStorage offers hardware encryption by default with brute force prevention enabled by default. Once the iStorage device is removed it locks and is useless if lost or stolen.

If you read up on the ICO (Information Commissioners Office) guidance on encryption it recommends using products which have a FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) certification which most of iStorage’s range do. After losing an iStorage device you have confidence the chance of a data breach is incredibly slim and you can tell ICO or the regulators you met their recommendations to reduce the chance of a fine or bad publicity.

Read more …

My interview with Mike Graham on TalkTV about Co-Op and Marks and Spencer hack

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Category: Blog

Published: 01 May 2025

Cyber Security Guide refreshed

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Category: Blog

Published: 14 February 2025

The Cyber Security Guide which is full of security tips was written between 3-13 years back and was refreshed to be more up to date as of this month.

• Common Security Myths
• Top Ten Tips
• Wi-Fi
• Office365/Microsoft365 Email
• Physical
• Email
• Websites
• Laptops/MacBooks
• Advanced Malware
• Cloud Computing
• Removable Media
• Servers
• Backups
• Passwords
• Smartphones
• Data

See https://www.datasecurityexpert.co.uk/cyber-security-guide.html for the above topics.