Because USB thumb drives are easily mislaid or stolen, they're a real security issue. It's possible to use software that encrypts your portable data by creating a password-protected partition, but this needs to be installed on any PC that needs to read your data. Kingston's new Data Traveller Elite - Privacy Edition gets around this problem by carrying everything it needs on-board.

Not only does it have an ARM7 co-processor that provides on-the-fly AES-128 (128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption of all the data that's written to the disk without noticeably affecting read/write performance, this USB 2.0 thumb drive also contains the necessary drivers and password management software. When you plug it into a new PC for the first time, a virtual CD containing the drivers and security layer is installed, and then the password prompt appears. It takes a little longer than installing a regular thumb drive, but is well worth the wait.

Owner details are shown on the log-in page - so it can be returned by an honest finder - and you only get 25 password attempts before the drive is wiped, which protects your data from "brute force" attacks. It's also worth noting that our best attempts to recover wiped files after this procedure proved fruitless, which is a good thing.