Seven secure USB drives compared

USB flash drives are very small, very portable, very convenient -- and very easy to lose. In fact, the question to ask these days isn't how to avoid losing your flash drive, but how to make sure your data is safe when you do. As a result, Computerworld decided it was time to look at seven USB flash drives that are outfitted with security features to keep your data safe.

We did what most IT managers and users would do and asked some of the top vendors for their most secure USB flash drives. All but one of these products use some form of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption, either 128-bit or 256-bit (according to experts, there's not much of a difference between 128-bit and 256-bit levels of AES encryption for ordinary purposes, as neither has yet been broken).