Apricorn Aegis Fortress 500GB Hardware Encrypted Portable Drive
Apricorn Aegis Fortress 500GB
The Aegis Fortress, just like the Aegis Secure Key 3z we reviewed recently comes in a tamper proof security sealed box. It would be nice to see if Apricorn highlighted some of the product features on the retail packaging so that they can expand beyond their current target markets.
Opening up the box you’re welcomed with the Aegis Fortress inside a carry pouch, a user manual and a USB extension cable.
One quibble we had when we reviewed the iStoroge DISKASHUR2 is the length of the USB cable attached to the drive. While the Aegis Fortress has the same length cable, the extension cable will no doubt come in handy.
The Front of the Aegis Fortress consists of an alpha numeric keypad and adorns the Apricorn logo on the top left corner. The keys don’t require hard presses to engage them and since the keypad has a polymer-coated membrane, it is wear-resistant and prevents revealing the drive’s most commonly used buttons.
The Aegis Fortress also features all the common bells and whistles drives of this nature offer, such as tamper protection, brute force protection, self destruct pin, IP56 certification etc. Since the drive isn’t detected by the host system until the correct PIN is entered, any key loggers will not detect the key presses on the drive.
In order to use the drive, you simply plugin to any available USB port and enter the PIN and press the unlock key. You will see the red LED move to green if the correct sequence is entered. The drive is formatted in NTFS by default and it’s platform independent. We even tested the drive on a non smart TV with USB input and it was able to pick the drive up.
Lets see how well the drive performs…
Apricorn Aegis Fortress
Pros
- Military Grade Data Encryption
- Platform agnostic
- Easy setup
- Value for money
Cons
- Average performance
