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Back in April Fujitsu posted a release about a new type of secure USB drive that used self-erasing operations in order to protect the data on board. The idea of a self-destructing USB drive (or any storage device for that matter) is a great one, but it looked like Fujitsu was finally taking things a step further than the typical secure USB drives that have been available (and not always so secure).
Fujitsu approached the device with two goals: “in the event that the USB memory device is lost or stolen, the data should not only be encrypted, but should automatically be deleted; and confidential data should be prevented from being copied except on predefined USB memory devices or servers”. To accomplish these their device was given a processor and battery (charging time is 5 minutes), which enable it to delete data after a set period of time (between 10 minutes and 7 days) or if it is plugged into an unauthorized computer. The drive is also able to delete its data if the incorrect key is entered a set number of times. It has 256-bit AES encryption.
In addition to 0n-device security Fujitsu has installable file redirect software that means data from the secure USB drive can only be used off of the drive or from a secure server, not copied locally, printed, or emailed. There are also administrator functions so admins can track their drives and see if they were deleted.
According to Crunchgear the drive, known as the Tamatebako, is now available in Japan although without reading Japanese not much more information can be parsed from Fujitsu’s release (PDF). We can see that the drive is 2GB, measures 70×70x24mm, and that it’s compatible with Windows XP and Vista (presumably 7 as well).
