Kanguru USB Drives with Secure Firmware

How Kanguru Secure Firmware USB Devices Help Organizations

Your data is one of the most valuable assets to your organization including company financials, personal information of clients, patients, proprietary, technical data, etc. To conduct good business requires easy access, convenience, and portability of this information in order to get work done. USB flash drives have become very popular for this reason because of the easy transfer of data. But researchers urge caution for specific circumstances where savvy hackers could potentially use USB technology to wreak havoc on a network or infrastructure. This threat, called "bad USB" could come from a third party manipulating the firmware of any USB peripheral such as a printer, keyboard, computer mouse, webcam, or memory stick to trick the USB into delivering malware that could infiltrate an organization's network.

Energy & Utility companies, Defense Contractors, and Government organizations are just a few of the industries where using secure firmware USB drives to protect from third-party malware tampering is a good idea. Industries that could be a potential high target for terrorism may choose to be proactive in implementing a solution that helps alleviate this potential threat by using USB drives with secure firmware implementation.

Organizations and IT professionals that restrict USB devices to Kanguru trusted secure firmware drives either through a company-wide security policy or endpoint protection, inherently protect their network and infrastructure because the firmware cannot be manipulated effectively.

Kanguru Secure Firmware USB Devices

Kanguru offers a variety of trusted USB devices with secure firmware to help organizations protect their infrastructure. Although all of the products in the Kanguru Defender® AES 256-Bit hardware encrypted family line contain on-board secure firmware along with encryption, Kanguru offers non-encrypted USB options with secure firmware as well, including:

• USB external optical drives (DVD and Blu-ray Burners)
• Non-Encrypted Flash USB Drives
• Hard Drives
• External Solid State Hard Drives

Secure firmware is a separate component from encryption. Where hardware encryption protects the data on the drive, secure firmware usb drives by Kanguru help protect the firmware from third-party tampering which could potentially be used as a vehicle to transmit malware onto an organization’s network.

Organizations can be confident that Kanguru secure firmware devices will help protect networks from firmware-based attacks.

Furthermore, whitelisting Kanguru secure firmware USB drives with endpoint security or an effective security policy provides a trustworthy environment for security-conscious organizations.

Is "badUSB" Really As Bad As It Sounds?

In August of 2014, researchers Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell at a Black Hat security event, revealed a potential threat to USB technology, pointing out that any USB peripherals, including printers, keyboards, computer mice, webcams or flash keys, could be open to a possibility of a third-party hacker physically changing the firmware to deliver infective malware. Although this would be a very difficult thing to do, the news, known as "BadUSB", has worried some organizations that USB devices could be vulnerable to such type of physical tampering.

It is not so much a threat to the average user, but there could be a potential threat to organizations that might be a target for terrorism or cyber-attacks. To combat this, organizations at greater risk can restrict their USB use to devices with secure firmware, making it a part of their overall security policy. Secure firmware USB provides an ideal layer of protection from malware attacks. For more on this, please see our blog.