Spyrus Co-Branded Encrypting and Bootable Windows To Go Drives by PNY

PNY Technologies, Inc. announced its entry into the assurance encrypting USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 storage and bootable drives market with PNY co-branded secured by Spyrus, Inc.’s drives.

These compact devices are resistant to the recently announced ‘BadUSB’ attacks and include the PocketVault P-3X and PocketVault P-384 encrypting USB drives as well as products for the portable workplace and secure portable workplace.

“PNY is proud to partner with Spyrus to manufacture and distribute the Spyrus USB product lines specifically engineered to meet the security needs of the Enterprise and Government marketplace,” said Bob Stone, SVP operations, PNY. “Our extensive USA manufacturing and support facilities for flash-based products in Parsippany, New Jersey, can meet the global demand forecasted for high security USB 2.0 and 3.0 devices.“

BadUSB attacks were described at the recent presentation, from the 2014 Black Hat Conference, entitled ‘BadUSB: On accessories that turn evil,’ by Karsten Nohl and Jacob Lell, SRLabs, Berlin. This lab study reported a latent, but well understood vulnerability, that potentially could affect any unprotected USB or microcontroller network connected device on the market today.

In essence, this attack can convert benign, normally secure USB peripherals or any vulnerable device controllers into ‘BadUSBs’ or ‘bad controllers’ for purposes determined by an attacker. Conventional malware scanners and antivirus programs cannot detect the tampering after-the-fact. By the time it’s detected, it may be too late to reverse the results because of device or system operational failures. The only way to prevent this attack is to understand how to prevent it in the initial design and implementation of the firmware architecture.

“The combination of Spyrus innovative trusted security engineering with PNY’s manufacturing experience has produced unsurpassed USA designed and manufactured USB security products to meet the requirements for hardware security, high performance, and water-resistant housing which adhere to the collective requirements from Enterprise, Government and Education markets,” said Tom Dickens, COO, Spyrus. “Spyrus customers can depend on our ability to ship millions of reliable devices for years to come.”

PocketVault P-3X combines USB 3.0 performance and SSD memory for performance. Designed to meet FIPS 140-2 Level 2 and Level 3 specifications, the P-3X features a ruggedized extruded aluminum case for demanding environmental applications and a embedded hardware security module to support digital signature applications.

PocketVault P-384 is a USB 2.0 drive that stores your data in an encrypted partition on its internal microSD card. The P-384 is a USCYBERCOM-ready and FIPS 140-2 Level 3 validated USB flash drive.

Both PocketVault P-3X and PocketVault P-384 encrypting USB drives use the XTS-AES 256-bit disk encryption instead of the older AES-CBC encryption found in competing products.

Hardware-encrypted secure portable workplace and Bitlocker encrypted portable workplace from Spyrus are Microsoft-certified Windows To Go drives that securely boot your custom Windows 8 or 8.1 image. Enterprise users can enjoy the mobility of a pocket-sized Windows To Go drive with access to all their enterprise network resources. Enterprise IT can rest assured that remote access to valuable resources is by authentic users running the corporate Windows image – even when booted from untrusted computers.