Key drive provides secure access on the road

Government Leader home > March 2005 issue

March 2005; Vol. 1 No. 1

Key drive provides secure access on the road

By John Breeden II

Checking e-mail when you’re away from the office is routine, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. And making sure the e-mail is secure can be downright difficult.

M-Systems Co. of Sunnyvale, Calif., has created a way to access your organization’s e-mail securely on the road or at home, and the company’s done it by using one of the most inherently unsecure hardware devices: the key drive.

The Xkey Exchange Edition 2.0 is far from your average flash memory key drive.



KEY MAIL: The Xkey’s security and ease of use are hard to beat.

The device has 1 gigabyte of storage but also an encrypted Structured Query Language database, a fully functional Microsoft Exchange program, an authentication program with digital certificates hidden away, an anti-spyware tool and all the drivers to run those applications.

At the moment the security features are limited to the device. But the company recently said it plans to move to a software platform, which would make its features available to any key chain device. If the e-mail function also makes the jump to the software platform, it could make life easier for executives while easing the minds of network administrators.

To use the Xkey, you set it up on your local system and program in all your password information. Your back-end e-mail server needs to be Microsoft Exchange Server, Version 5.5 or higher. Then all you need anywhere in the world is a free USB port.

You just pop the Xkey into a free port, spend a few seconds installing the drivers and enter your password. Your e-mail application pops up complete with calendar. Working on the remote system is just like sitting in the office.

When you remove the Xkey, it erases any trace that it was there by purging all cookies, history and cache files—plus its own drivers from the system. The next person who sits down won’t even know you were there, much less be able to read your e-mail.

This makes the Xkey far better than accessing e-mail via the Web, which is not only unreliable sometimes but insecure. All communications with the Xkey to your home server are sent with 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer encryption.

The Xkey is expensive—$550 for the 1 gigabyte drive—which might make the software option more attractive. But the security features and ease of use are hard to beat.

Visit the company’s Web site at www.Xkey.com.