The CryptoStick® brand USB flash drive and CryptoLock™ encryption software from Research Triangle Software can make incidents, like the recent breach of security at the US Los Alamos National Laboratory, involving portable USB flash memory devices fully preventable. These devices, often called Memory Sticks or thumb-drives, are approximately the size of a thumb, and have become common as personal and portable data storage media throughout the world. They can be carried on a key chain, and are often used to transfer data between computers by business executives for travel and work at home.

In the Los Alamos incident, one of these memory devices containing highly classified nuclear secrets was discovered in a mobile home near the laboratory. It was found to contain a number of personal files, but also twenty-two pages of classified information taken from the facility by a worker doing extra work at home. While the act of removing the material from the site at all should not have occurred, the circumstances could have been mitigated had the documents been encrypted instead of being fully readable.

"This has become an all too common occurrence," said Jeffrey W. LeRose, President and CEO of Research Triangle Software. "Governments and corporations need a safe means for data to be transported, but few have stepped up to the problem directly. The use of a secure system, allowing the data to be safely encrypted for transport could eliminate many, if not all, such problems."

The response from Los Alamos, announced this week, has been to ban such devices from the facility, and disable the ports where they can be attached to the computers there. This is cold comfort when noting it does not close off such data losses through CDs or floppy disks, and blocks the possibility of using a secure method of data transport when this is necessary.

Other incidents of this type could have been avoided as well. Not long ago, merchants in bazaars and markets in Iraq and Afghanistan were found to be selling these portable devices stolen from various US military facilities. Many contained classified military data on troop strengths and movements. Had this data been encrypted, the problem would not have been as serious. Along with this, the US Veterans Administration had personnel files compromised when they were removed, unencrypted, on a laptop from a facility, and the laptop subsequently lost.

The corporate world is not immune either. At least three incidents in the last year have involved sensitive personnel records being lost on laptops and other storage devices. Had these records been properly encrypted, many of the associated problems could have been avoided.

Data security has become an issue to all governments and corporations around the world, and extending deeply into our personal lives as well. No single solution will end the problem, but proper security procedures, including encryption, correctly implemented will bring it under control. Research Triangle Software encourages all corporations, governments, and individuals to take these steps to protect all of us from these all too common security breaches.