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    CipherShield™ is a line of hardware encrypted drives manufactured by BUSlink.



    Why should I need CipherShield encrypted drive?
    The sensitive nature of confidential information is driving the need to secure data stored on all portable computer systems. CipherShield innovative solution ensures multi-level privacy, confidentiality and authentication - allowing organizations to protect valuable assets, credentials and intellectual property which are exposed to significant risk of theft. Legal liability and the financial consequences associated with stolen confidential information require organizations to go to extreme lengths to protect their data.

    CipherShield encrypted storage products offer superior data encryption and pre-boot authentication, thus allowing companies to shield their data and regulate control over access to their corporate and sensitive customers information. By doing that, they comply themselves with federal regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, or HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) for healthcare industry.

    How to operate the drive?
    All CipherShield drives utilize a key or two keys to gain access to the drive. Access to the drive is granted by inserting the key into a slot on the faceplate. By removing the key, data cannot be accessed even though the drive is still connected to the computer. When the key is removed, the drive is "transparent" to the operating system of a computer, thereby ensuring full protection of the data.

    What is so special about hardware-based encryption?
    Certain inhibiting factors have limited the widespread adoption of data encryption. Software solutions fail to address multiple concerns of performance degradation, user acceptance and ease-of-use. In contrast, hardware-based encryption technology is a much more secure solution offering simple and absolute data security which completely eliminates processor cycle interrupts and memory overhead. With CipherShield transparent hardware based solution you are assured that your data and credentials are fully protected.

    The encryption strength of software-based / password protection approach depends entirely on the strength / unguessability of the password itself. Not only that, you have to take into consideration on the fact that.... people just forget. With today's hectic life, remembering a complex password like "Myd0g$N4me#7" with all the numbers, punctuations, and mixed uppercase and lowercase letters, will eventually lead to the password in a post-in note and sticked somewhere to the wall, or else they're just going to create a simple password like "john123".

    And then think about the scenario when the user does forget.

    With hardware-based key encryption, the key itself is the password. The encryption and decryption, which utilize government-grade AES encryption algorithm, are done by a processor embedded inside. The access to the data isn't relied on password, which could be easily hacked, but on physical element.

    Apart from a faster, real-time processing of data encryption and decryption, hardware-based encryption is also not as vulnerable as software-based password input in terms of brute force attack of password guessing. An attacker can plug the drive into the computer and have a program performs hundreds of password guessing in a second. Furthermore, there will also a cross-platform issue with software-based password feature, in which it will only work in Windows PC, not Mac or Linux. With hardware-based encryption, this won't be an issue at all.

    The main advantage to CipherShield over other security method is that our product is designed to be used by everyone and anyone. Unlike software encryption, there are no passwords to remember or complex installation. Such method usually requires MIS support and are costly. Other hardware solution also are costly and only used by corporations.


    Hardware Encryption Software Encryption
    Computations are done in a separate device, which will avoid the overload of main processor Encryption involves computationally intensive processes, which will require significant processing load for the main processor
    The device usually incorporates an accelerator board speed of processing Encryption code could be easily altered, if the encryption host is compromised
    Difficult to tamper with, even with the access to the device itself. Overall security is generally reduced by low cost and non-requirement of specialized platform
    High degree of protection against attack Software "key" can be easily copied and attack "off-line"


    So how secured is your data? Key lengths and possible combination of "breaking the key":

    • 40-bit, 240 = 1,099,511,627,776 
    • 64-bit, 264 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616
    • 128-bit, 2128 = 3.4028e+36
    • 192-bit, 2192 = ???  (You do the math)
    • 256-bit, the encryption strength is off the chart

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