CTO TAlks

Kill Pill - Shut it down

Protecting corporate data at risk on USB flash drives.

Many times, I have heard our customers say that they trust their end users. But when an end user decides to leave the organization, the trust goes away and many IT administrators feel that they would like the ability to be able to lock down the end user access to the corporate data. Cryptzone offers the Secured eUSB solution that can encrypt any standard USB flash drive from any manufacturer, but that doesn’t solve the problem of employees refusing or "forgetting" to return the flash drive. What happens to the flash drive if it is stolen or lost? Even though the data on the flash drive may be encrypted, the key or password might become public.

The Kill Pill feature that is built-in as an anti-theft implementation and addition to the Secured eUSB solution is a first step to remove the big worry for the IT administrator. IT administrators now have a centralized management console that can send out a Kill Pill command to a secured USB flash drive. The Kill Pill can be set up to have two different actions. The first action would be to block all access rights to the drive and only the IT administrator can access the flash drive. The second action can wipe and destroy all data on the flash drive, leaving it empty without any traces. Even though there is no smoke or fire, the effect is significantly important and guarantees that the data on the flash drive is destroyed. The IT administrator will get a report in the central management console when the Kill Pill action was successfully deployed and have taken effect. Included in the report the IT administrator will be able to read out the IP and MAC address for the computer where "someone" tried to open the flash drive.

With the Secured eUSB solution, all data stored on USB flash drives will be secured and using the Kill Pill feature the IT administrator can rest assured that access to data on the flash drive will lock out the former employee, even after "Elvis left the building".