Encrypted USB flash drives: Cheaper than legal fees

You may have noticed that in our communications, we often discuss the importance of using encrypted USB drives to secure data. A lost USB drive is one of the main causes of data breaches. Breaches are damaging to your reputation and your bank account.

While we have talked about this many times, we have never talked about the cost of preventative encryption compared to the potential cost of hiring a defence barrister after the fact. So, here’s some information to chew on.

Given the amount of data that can be stored on USB drives, the damage caused by a lost or stolen unit can be significant to a company. Factoring in the multiplication effect of where the hacker has access to the data held on the drive, they potentially have access to other critical information that leads them to other locations, which may lead to exponential damage.

A USB drive with hardware-based encryption is an excellent, straightforward, non-complicated solution. Ranging in price from $40 to $600, they are ideal for applications ranging from small-business owners to large companies to non-profits and all branches of government.

Even a higher-priced drive is less costly than paying legal fees if you were to get hacked and found yourself facing legal action.

Rest assured that whatever the flat fee is, it’s more than likely costlier than what multiple hardware-encrypted USB drives would have cost and quite possibly could have saved a company from being hacked. However, you agree to pay or be charged. Unless the lawyer is your fresh-out-of-university brother-in-law, in all likelihood, his or her services won't be cheap.

A patent-protected hardware-centric/software-free encryption approach to data security is the best defence against data loss. With a multitude of USB drive options for a multitude of use cases, there are clearly more pros, if any cons at all, for a company to put the right security measures and best practices in place as early as possible. Your company can institute a culture of data security early in its lifespan, instead of learning the hard way after the fact.

Dealing with legal fees for protecting your company in data-breach legal suits will cost you more than just money: the reputational damage may ultimately be more than your company can recover from.