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Aegis Secure Key 3Z – Keep your data safe!

Data protection is more important than you think it is. This applies whether the data is your own or belongs to your company. Protecting your secrets should be your most important priority. While the internet and the digital media offer us a lot of easy and simple solutions, they also expose our data to almost everyone. Of course, you also keep hearing about those USB sticks that contain confidential data constantly popping up in public places. Apricon has a solution to all of this. With their Aegis Secure Key 3Z, you have a USB stick that comes with built-in security.

Aegis Secure Key 3Z – Features

  • 256-BIT AES-XTS Hardware Encryption
  • Software free authentication
  • Compatible with any OS and any device that recognizes USB devices as a storage device
  • Compatible with AEGIS Configurator
  • High-Quality Rugged Aluminium Housing
  • IP57 (Pending) Water and Dust resistance
  • Embedded 7 to 16 digit pin authentication
  • Admin mode for secure deployment
  • Independent user and admin pins
  • Recovery pins in case of forgotten or lost pin
  • Brute force protection
  • Self-destruct pin
  • Auto-lock

Look and feel

This really doesn’t look like an ordinary USB stick. A bit bigger, a bit bulkier, a bit heavier, it comes with a keypad on top, along with a bunch of status LEDs.

The LEDs sit under their respective icons: red for locked, green for unlocked and blue for unlocking.

The keys are used to unlock the device. They take firm presses, but not in an annoying way.

Setup

The Aegis Secure Key 3Z works with any device that will recognize a USB device as a portable storage. This means you can plug this into pretty much anything, from your laptop all the way to your speaker.

Out of the box, the device comes unlocked and ready to be configured.

After that, to set up a pin, you press the green ‘unlock’ key and the 9 key together. Follow this with a pin that has no repeating digits, and is between 7 and 16 characters long. Repeat again and you are good to go.

Usage

Once setup, you will need to use your pin to unlock the device. The Aegis Secure Key 3Z does not rely on the host device to unlock it. This means that no information or pin is shared with it either.

The device comes with a built-in battery that is rechargeable. This means that you can unlock it before plugging it into any device. In case the battery does run out, you can unlock it while plugged in.

When unlocked and plugged in, this behaves like any other USB stick.

When unplugged, the device automatically locks itself. Alternatively, hit the LOCK key on the device to lock it.

Transfer Speeds

Transfer speeds were reasonably comparable to most USB devices.

Advanced users

If you want to issue these on a company basis (and the government should really invest in these or similar!), you can get the Aegis Configurator to set these up as well as implement Admin rules on these. Since I was a simple user, I didn’t delve into many of these apart from having a quick browse of what was on offer.

It runs hot

Yes, there is a certain amount of warmth to this. This isn’t uncommon among devices that offer encryption. After all, somebody has to do that hard work. However, the casing is designed to be a heatsink, and after hours and hours of usage, no issue was found due to the heat. Don’t worry about your host either, as the design happily takes the heat away from the USB port.

More information

More information on this can be found on the Apricorn website.

It is available from various online retailers such as Amazon.

It comes in the following capacities, with their prices:

  • 8GB, £74
  • 16GB, £92
  • 32GB, £120
  • 64GB, £195
  • 128GB, £225

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