Transport for London (TfL) is set to adopt military-grade encryption on USB drives in a bid to prevent loss of sensitive data through theft or loss, an ongoing problem for public bodies.
Security vendor iStorage will provide the transport group with its datAshur flash drives following a pilot across many of its departments, with TfL seeking to bring itself in line with the Payment Card Industry’s Data Security Standard.
Graham Dawes, solutions architect for TfL, said: "During our trial of the datAshur USB drives, staff found they were easy-to-use, secure and provided assurance that should a device be lost or stolen, then the data contained on it would be protected using strong encryption.
"From a project and ongoing support perspective, one of the main benefits of the datAshur devices is not having a backend infrastructure to manage, making it simple to use, and not requiring any drivers or software to be installed."
datAshur conforms to Level of 3 the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2, a measure of security used by the US government to assess the strength of cryptography, particularly for use in government work.
"We are delighted to work alongside Transport for London in providing a robust security solution for staff when transporting data. We are at a time when data security is taken very seriously," said John Michael, chief executive at iStorage.
"If the Data Protection Act is violated then companies face serious fines – not only that, the reputation of the entire company can also be compromised. By purchasing a number of datAshur devices for its staff, TfL ensures its integrity and proves its commitment to security."
