Putting all your eggs in one basket is not a good idea. Keeping all your critical data on an item you keep on your person at all times, a USB drive, ensures that it is protected. However, it also means that your data is moving around and thus increases the number of places you could be parted from it.

Now, your USB drive may include a security program for encryption. If it does not, or you wish to use a program that will work on any drive and not just on the drive you purchased, try TrueCrypt. TrueCrypt creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a disk. TrueCrypt can run in Traveller Mode, which allows it to not be installed on the Operating System. You will need administrative privileges in order to run it that way and records of the mount may be left on the computer, although the data will be secure.

For portable versions of various popular applications, visit Portableapps.com. It includes portable versions of the Firefox Web Browser and the Thunderbird Email Client, as well as an IM client, a portable version of OpenOffice, and so on. Our ideal portable applicatiion USB drive contains Openoffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, TrueCrypt, KeePass(which we mentioned in a previous post), and Miranda IM Portable. Our data USB drive contains KeePass, TrueCrypt, and our secure data.
In a future post, we will discuss how to install a bootable operating system on your USB drive, if you wish to go a step further in mobile security.
Just remember when using a USB drive with portable applications that they can spread viruses and malicious code in between computers. Scan your USB drive for viruses on a regular basis, especially when it has been in strange computers. Also, back up your USB files regularly to ensure your protection.

In our next security piece, we’ll discuss strategies for backing up your data.