Accountants have a duty to safeguard their clients confidential data, but thats not always easy with computer files, which can be easily whisked off a PC whilst someone is away from their desk or disappear with a lost laptop.
For the past few weeks, Ive been trying out a portable hard drive, the Aegis Padlock, from
The drive is fairly quick at backups. I was able to back up 31 gigabytes of files in about 40 minutes. The only difficulty I had was with changing the administrator password and getting the drive to recognize a new password. I suspect, though, that was probably a case of operator error.
The Aegis Padlock has features to fend off brute force attacks by hackers trying a series of passwords. It will only operate if the correct password is entered and an LED light then turns from red to green. After six tries at cracking the password, the keypad wont respond and the LED light will turn off. After 50 unsuccessful tries, the keypad will lock up and the LED light will keep blinking on and off. After 100 unsuccessful tries, the drive will remain locked and will have to be completely reset and reformatted in order to be used again, effectively erasing the data.
The Aegis Padlock seems to provide good strong protection for data, but whatever you do, dont forget your administrator password.