Gemalto, yet another world leading company in the digital security segment, has announced today its FIPS 140-2 level 3 certification for its Smart Guardian (SG) FIPS smart card-based encrypted USB drive with personal identity verification (PIV) integrated authentication ability. Supposedly, this is the first of its kind secure storage dongle that is a zero-footprint smart card protected flash drive to meet the U.S. military 810-F environmental standard. This comes to secure the mobile data of U.S. government employees.

“It is critically important to protect data-at-rest with the same levels of security as you would for any classified information,” said Neville Pattinson, vice president of government affairs, North America, for Gemalto. “As government employees become increasingly mobile and USB removable media drives become more ubiquitous, protecting the sensitive data on these mobile devices needs to be a top priority. The SG FIPS solves this by providing data-at-rest protection for all government data on the device without impacting user productivity, while the PIV integration provides the convenience of only having to remember one PIN.”

Knowing that, it is sure that at least one employee will forget the PIN, so this should also be fun. Getting back to the serious side, the manufacturer developed the SG FIPS encrypted USB drive to be as easy to use as possible. Agencies are given the possibility of binding the dongle to their employees’ government issued PIV credentials in order to grant them access to the protected storage based upon a successful PIV authentication. That's what makes this token special, namely the fact that it uses double authentication, ensuring that only the authorized PIV user is provided with access to the data stored on the device.

Already available for purchase via Gemalto authorized resellers, the SG FIPS is forged in the United States, comes packed in a rugged, waterproof casing and is plug-and-play compatible with most operating systems, such as Windows and Mac OS.


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