CRU DataPort SecureDock

What’s so special about the CRU-SecureDock?

It can be summed up in one word “Security”. As mentioned at the beginning of this review the SecureDock is capable of encrypting data it writes to the hard drive on the fly without any performance degradation. The CRU DataPort SecureDock encrypts data using military grade AES 128bit cryptography ensuring complete protection for data it stores. The beauty of this device is that the complete hard drive is encrypted which includes the boot sector, OS, Temp and swap files. Now one would expect a performance hit due to the extra overhead of encrypting data, however the DataPort SecureDock comes with a High-Speed hardware processor that encrypts/decrypts data at full disk bandwidth.

CRU DataPort provides 3 Encryption keys with the SecureDock. Anyone of these keys can be plugged into the SecureDock to make the drive usable and since the encryption key is always kept separate to the device your data is still protected if the SecureDock is lost or stolen. The encryption keys are provided with tags making it easy to hang the key around your neck. Get used to the habit of always removing the encryption key from the device when not needed or it’ll be like pasting the combination of a safe on the safe door.

The encryption standard on the SecureDock is FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) approved so you can be assured of its quality standards. FIPS is a U.S. government computer security standard used to accredit cryptographic modules. For those interested, you might like to know that the DataPort SecureDock holds a FIPS-197 validation.

“FIPS establishes the Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP) as a joint effort by the NIST and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) for the Canadian government.

Security programs overseen by NIST and CSE focus on working with government and industry to establish more secure systems and networks by developing, managing and promoting security assessment tools, techniques, services, and supporting programs for testing, evaluation and validation; and addresses such areas as: development and maintenance of security metrics, security evaluation criteria and evaluation methodologies, tests and test methods; security-specific criteria for laboratory accreditation; guidance on the use of evaluated and tested products; research to address assurance methods and system-wide security and assessment methodologies; security protocol validation activities; and appropriate coordination with assessment-related activities of voluntary industry standards bodies and other assessment regimes.” Source: wikipedia.org

In the past I have used software products that encrypt data; however this is the first time I have come across a fully fledged hardware device that encrypts your total hard drive on the fly.

If you want to manage your own security keys, CRU-DataPort offers an AES Key Programmer (Sold separately) providing you a cost effective way for you to create and manage your own Security Keys without relying on any outside vendor. I don’t see the need for the average home user to be this paranoid and go as far as getting the AES Key Programmer, however for corporates this can be a basic necessity.

Just for kicks we wanted to try out our Encase V3 Forensics investigating software and see if it could read the data stored in the encrypted drive. Encase is an industry leading Forensics Investigating tool and we simply extracted the data stored on the Dataport SecureDock through the software to see if it would be readable. The Encase version we have isn’t the latest copy out there, nevertheless the extracted data wasn’t in any readable format proving the fact that the SecureDock actually does what it states.