Technology Articles
Secure That Flash Drive!
How to Encrypt Flash Drives for Yourself or across Your Firm
By: By Dr. Bob Spencer
Intuit ProConnection Really Simple
You can bring these articles to your desktop as soon as they are published.
Already a ProConnection subscriber?
Update your profile and personalize your ProConnection experience.
Update your profile
Not a subscriber yet?
Sign up now for free and start receiving customized newsletters directly to your inbox.
Sign up now
Flash Drives are cheap now, aren’t they? With their increased use as a default for convenient storage and transportation, Technologist Dr. Bob Spencer sees many practice units which need to tighten up security on all that client data floating around. Here are step-by-step instructions to walk you through a sample installation using a free utility. Plus advice and sample policy language for documenting this improvement to internal control. ~ Editor
Step-by-Step Instructions
My assumption is that many of you use inexpensive Flash Drives (also called Thumb or USB Drives) to store and transport information. Most business professionals recognize the risk of transporting potentially sensitive information on unprotected storage devices such as Flash Drives. So, the need to encrypt such sensitive information should be obvious. The question is how to do it?
How to Encrypt Flash Drives for Yourself or across Your Firm [PDF]
Importance of Well-Documented Internal Control Procedures
As a strong believer in the importance of internal controls for small business, I teach a number of classes to help practitioners help small businesses improve their controls. Encrypting flash drives is useless unless everyone follows the process for using the flash drives exactly and consistently.
Internal Control Procedures for Managing Encrypted Removable Drives [PDF]
Note: The above document also links to a Word document you can adapt as needed for your own practice unit.
Dr. Bob Spencer is an internationally recognized writer, lecturer and consultant. You may e-mail him drbob@tsif.com, or visit him at Twenty Seconds In the Future.
Last Updated: 03/30/2009
