takeware

Hi We had a look at the Integal drives a few weeks back - looking for good stuff at a good price we could recommend to schools - with the BECTA advice coming through. The ones we evaluated were software encryption and required the user to have admin rights - which we thought would be inconvenient at the very least in most schools. We've since spoken to the Integal folks to check and they told us the software hasn't changed - so do take a look at a sample before you grab a pile I suggest (but if we're misinformed and they DO employ hardware encryption please let me know?) Talking of which there was a good short article in the EduGeek Educate IT 2009.pdf that came out of BETT just recently on page 24 by Tony Sheppard (and find the url just now - will dig it out later) about what Becta are saying about encrypting flashdrives (amongst other things). We are giving a lot of thought to how best to support schools by building in low cost encryption (good open source stuff) and making it easy to both use and enforce - as well as providing for 'Impact Level Labelling' and Compliance reports. Since Becta clearly approve of TrueCrypt (as we do) were looking to see what we can do to offer support and perhaps help packages for the less well endowed (with tech skills I mean ;-)) Would be very interested if anyone has any thoughts - or a wish-list? My point (at last) being that you might want to give some though about this and whether to hold off from buying too many of the unencrypted stuff as it could be that you end up replacing them in a few months time? Or retrofitting them with TrueCrypt or similar? Just a thought.

Been discussing this with a colleague and wonder if the U3 or similar drive managed to install it's launcher on the PC - so that it ws able to run later - and appeared (to XP) to be running from the PC rather than the drive? Just a thought - as I can't see any way that it can get booted up without Autorun. (I've designed numerous applications over the last few years to make startup as easy as possible from removables but without 'injecting' a launcher or autorun I still can't see a way it can be done). On the vexed question of USB and security - as you may know this is our speciality - so again I will try to tread carefully. Please tell me if you dont find this helpful and I will desist straight away! I know it's not easy to preserve a good level of security and keep the convenience and flexibility of allowing removable memory devices to be used. As Geoff says there are a lot of considerations and some real 'gotchas'. The reason we have concentrated a lot of developement on this area is that there seems to be many schools - a majority of schools as far as I can tell - who want or need both. We have achieved this in numerous schools over the last three years or so but again as Geoff points out the problems are becoming more complex as the BECTA requirements etc require higher security and Impact Level labelling etc. making the problems very different when a student / pupil is logged in from when a staff member is. In the latter case the prime need (in my understanding) is to enure that data leaving is encrypted and is auditable (and that everyone knows that) - while with the pupils it's principally to prevent the kind of problems we've been discussing here (exes / autorun etc) and the bringing in - or taking out - of MP3s and other copyright stuff. It seems to me that every school is a little (or a lot) different in its needs and emphasis - and I'm constantly amazed at the diversity! You will no doubt have gathered that we have not given up on the quest (for the best of both worlds) - far from it. But I am keen to know what the key people on the frontline are thinking and how they plan to meet these challenges. Not sure I can help with arguments to persuade SMT to up the Araldite budget (kidding) but otherwise I might be able to help a bit here and there!

It's difficult for the OS to tell the difference between a real CD drive and a good emulation in software. This may possibly be an understatement ;-) I'm going to tread very carefully here - as I'm new here are don't want to overstep the mark - but we have software that does that (and a lot more). I'm happy to provide more details - but via private mail or only with explicit permission. One way you can differentiate between a resident CD and one on a USB device is that the interloper is not there at startup (obvious loophole - if it's already plugged in at startup). A utility is possible that detects the (late) arrival of a vCD and kicks it out. I don't know how useful that would be? If enough interest is there I might be able to get something made up and available as a freeware download (once we test it). Let me know?

Hi Formatting wont do it I'm afraid, neither will partitioning. U3 and some others emulate a CD in their firmware - which means as far as Windows is concerned it's pretty much a separate device. Some of manufacturers provide tools to manipulate the vCD - can't recall whether U3 do. M-Systems (who designed the U3 system and then partnered with Sandisk to try to poularise it) used to provide such tools as a downloadable SDK. But we are going back quite a while. Drives are so cheap now why bother with it? HTH