safest way to carry portable data

what is the safest and most secure way of carrying data in a portable format ?. in the past i have tried encrypted flash drives and similar, but no matter how strong or elaborate your password is the have ALL have a major issue which is in order to access your data you either need to give the password or type it into along with all the associated risks eg. somebody looking over your shoulder,keyloggers etc...... which effectively renders your security worthless. so is there another alternative method that needs to be portable.

Gazzer

 

Have you considered bringing your own laptop/net-book/tablet to work off of? This way you don't have to worry about using a third party machine that might contain key-loggers and other malicious agents. The only remain concerns for you will be (1) maintaining a clean system on this device, (2) connecting to a network securely. Other then that, the poor mans solution I guess would be a live disk on third party machines. As I don't use the later approach, I can't speak for the security risks inherent to this approach. I do known that some organizations block users from doing so, but this may not apply to your situation.

 

yeah but its a pain to carry around with you, i was looking for something just as potable, but able to just put in my pocket and not even notice it similar to a usb pen drive. its also less of a risk from the point of view that it might get damaged,lost or stolen etc

 

Understandable, I'm not particularly a big fan of lugging my laptop around myself. Seeing as this isn't your own personal device, I can't speculate what restrictions are in place on this machine and its network. So it occurred to me that something like a virtual shared workspace might be a more complicated and expensive alternative. You would have to be prepared to deal with service outages, service charges, etc. That's why I think a live disk is really the most affordable work around here for you in addition to what you've already done. The funny thing is that as computer processors improve and memory becomes cheaper many of the applications you'd think would be small and compact have only gotten bigger. Tablet productivity is coming along, but not nearly fast enough to replace my laptop and desktop at school and work. Hopefully you have better luck filling your own needs.

 

FWIW, I've seen a number of preconfigured Live-USB type devices... Windows and Linux... on the market. I only recently started bookmarking on this subject, so this is all I have: http://www.spyrus.com/news/2013_02_25-2.asp

I've also seen a number of DIY Live-USB articles, some where the encryption was limited and some where the objective was FDE coverage. Just one link on the later: http://www.infosecramblings.com/bac...le-usb-thumb-drive-with-full-disk-encryption/

Can't vouch for either obviously. If you find something which is tempting, be sure to dig into what if any mechanisms are in place to wipe residual data (RAM for example) when you are done using it.

 

If you're willing to use Debian, and if you need less than 3GB data, bootcd may be your answer. You could store the data in a TrueCrypt volume (such as /home/user/data.tc). With suitable parameters in bootcdwrite.config, you'd get a bootcd.iso that would boot on just about any hardware, and as a VM. You'd need to save changes on a USB drive, or put them online somewhere. It might also be possible to carry as much as 6GB data if Truecrypt volumes will mount from read-only media. I'm pretty sure that they do. If so, you'd configure bootcdwrite to not load data.tc into RAM during boot.

 

If I may be blunt, basic encryption should meet your goal here (data at rest, or in your case physical transit). A lot of what you are describing while accurate is when you are introducing that data into uncontrolled environments (public/corporate terminals, hotspots). At that point if you don't fully control the environment your data is at risk from those factors above and additional ones not listed here. Does your data really need live-usb, usb hardware based solutions if you are willing to introduce it to such environments? Or would just any encrypted software zip/container suffice?

My point is if this information is say your entire credit history,SSN,or next week's winning lotto numbers... does that information need to be in portable format and accessible anywhere? In the event it does, you will be looking for hardware based solutions and even then there is no guarantee when plugging them into unknown/uncontrolled environments.

 

You carry a phone, correct? Or is a 7" Tablet too big? I only know Android, but I feel fine having a dm-crypt protected phone/tablet, with secondary encryption from apps. GPG/VPN/Tor, etc...

The bootable OS is spot on too.

PD

 

Ceedo Personal but its not free http://www.ceedo.com/ $40 bucks

 

But IMO if your that worried about your password and data you should be using your own machine to access your protected data.....

 

That looks really cool. Have you tried it?

 

Garry35, you can read more about Integral USB encrypted drives:
http://www.integralmemory.com/product-categories/encrypted-usb-drives
there is full FAQ section where you should answer for your questions (choose Category "Crypto USB"):
http://www.integralmemory.com/faq

 

Yes Ceedo Personal is cool, you can download it and try it for 45 days to see if you like it before you buy too.

anybody tried this one?
VirtualBox Portable, I haven't tried it yet...
http://www.vbox.me/

Their was another one that was a virtual windows on usb called Mojopac, it kinda looked like comodo kiosk and ran right in windows like a virtualbox, it got discontinued and they started RingCube vDesk and some others which also seems to have vanished. I guess Citrix acquired RingCube, and that was the end of that.

 

Do you use a Key-File, like in Axcrypt? It provides an additional security. Based on your requirements, you can put it only on computers you use, not on the USB, so if USB would be stolen, without a Key-File, no one could open it. Or put it to a safe cloud storage, to access it anywhere, opening it in VM and via SSL, so it could not be copied.