Kingston IronKey Vault Privacy 80 External SSD 1 TB

[W1zzard]

The Kingston IronKey Vault Privacy 80 is a Portable SSD that comes with serious hardware security. All data is encrypted by a hardware engine and access only gets unlocked after you enter the password on the device's touch-screen. Too many wrong attempts and your data will self-destruct.

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[zlobby]

An overpriced SSD enclosure. XTS alone should tell you that security is not a paramount here.

Do yourselves a favor and get a SSD, which can later be fully encrypted via SW, and save money in the process.

 

[TheUn4seen]

The price screams "government overspending bait", but, for what it is, I'd say it's a fine device. Easy to use, OS agnostic. Read-only mode is an important addition, often overlooked but can be vital in some situations like for plausible deniability - read only means no metadata, like file access time, is saved, among others. The main question is "how much do you trust Kingston?" to which I would reply "Not at all". The firmware is proprietary with no trace of a public audit and the device seems to be aimed at government drones so there probably are nasty surprises hidden inside. For security I'd still go with a software solutions, but if ease of use is the priority and top of the line security is less important - because let's face it, wife's "special" photo session doesn't really need a full AES-Twofish-Serpent treatment, but you also don't want a casual thief to find it. It's a "good enough" middle ground solution.

On the topic of cryptographic security:

 

[forman313]

Im no expert on the matter, but this product seems to me like a 2019-20 product they just forgot to ship.

I have a 2yr old Samsung T7 Touch 1TB and its half the size, less than half the price and 4 times as fast with or without the encryption enabled. With the fingerprint reader enabled no software is required.

What gives?

 

[W1zzard]

If I understand correctly, Samsung T7 has no FIPS certification and requires the software on the host PC, and there's no read-only mode. But yes, for 99% of people this will be sufficient

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

The price screams "government overspending bait", but, for what it is, I'd say it's a fine device. Easy to use, OS agnostic. Read-only mode is an important addition, often overlooked but can be vital in some situations like for plausible deniability - read only means no metadata, like file access time, is saved, among others. The main question is "how much do you trust Kingston?" to which I would reply "Not at all". The firmware is proprietary with no trace of a public audit and the device seems to be aimed at government drones so there probably are nasty surprises hidden inside. For security I'd still go with a software solutions, but if ease of use is the priority and top of the line security is less important - because let's face it, wife's "special" photo session doesn't really need a full AES-Twofish-Serpent treatment, but you also don't want a casual thief to find it. It's a "good enough" middle ground solution.

On the topic of cryptographic security:

For government stuff it doesn't leave the SCIF unless you are Donald Trump and print it and take it out. For industry stuff you use Apricorn level drives. Stuff like this is good enough for home pics and the like though.