The most important names in the USB memory market have launched new lines of USB flash drives with security-focused features. From support for integrated encryption to fingerprint reading, all are robust options that aim to keep unwanted eyes away, but if what you want is to protect a common USB drive, you'll need to take extra precautions, combining encrypted containers with the classic password protection. Today we'll show you how.
Before we begin, you should recognize a truth that none of us can escape: the typical USB drive is not designed for this. Simply isn't. The priority of a USB drive is to transfer data quickly and easily, making the most of USB interface compatibility. When it comes to protecting that data, some companies provide proprietary tools, but they don't have wide adoption.
How to Put a Password on a USB Flash Drive
Most guides recommend using BitLocker, the official Windows encryption system, but its problem is that it's not available in all versions of the operating system. In other words, if someone follows a BitLocker guide and uses Windows 7 Home Basic, they won't be able to do any of what's shown. Therefore, for the sake of greater diversity, what we're going to encrypt and protect with a password is not the whole USB drive, but a container we'll create inside it, and the tool chosen for this is VeraCrypt, open source successor to the well-known TrueCrypt.
- Download, install, and run VeraCrypt. The program works on all Windows editions from XP onward, and there are builds compatible with Linux and OS X.
- Click "Create Volume", then "Create an encrypted file container", and finally "VeraCrypt Standard Volume".
- When VeraCrypt asks for the volume location, point it to the USB drive and assign any name you like (no extension needed). In the next step, the default options (AES, SHA-512) should work well, but you can change them.
- Specify the size of the encrypted container. The larger it is, the more time VeraCrypt will need to finish the process. Next, write the password that will protect the container (VeraCrypt will warn if it's under 20 characters), then set the formatting parameters on the USB drive (if you don't handle files larger than 4 GB, FAT works fine).
- A couple of minutes later, the process will be done, but we're not finished yet. With the USB drive still connected, go to VeraCrypt's Tools section and click "Create Traveler Disk".
- At the top of the menu, set the USB drive path again. For the auto-start settings, choose "Mount automatically" (this may be blocked depending on the computer), and in Mount Settings select the previously created container. Finish by clicking "Create".
Why is all this necessary? There are three reasons: Encrypted containers can only be "mounted" on a system if they're accompanied by a copy of VeraCrypt (that's where the Traveler Disk function comes in), the user has more flexibility in accessing encrypted and non-encrypted sections of the USB drive simultaneously, and delicate aspects like boot sectors are not modified. The only two downsides with this method are the blocking of autorun on several computers (the user will have to run VeraCrypt and mount the encrypted container manually), and running VeraCrypt with elevated privileges. Without a doubt, there are many alternatives out there, but we believe this offers the best balance between security and simplicity, it's free for the user, and it's open source. Good luck!
