Cloud storage is lessening the hard drive’s load and making it easier for us to access all of our data anywhere. But for a lot of people (particularly those who watch the frequent news stories about data being stolen from the cloud), physical storage still seems like a far better option. Fasetto‘s Link wristband offers that secure physical storage in a very cool, if somewhat clunky, wearable form.

The Link gives you up to 1TB of storage on a solid state hard drive that goes anywhere with you. The wristband is strong and durable enough to wear it every day; it’s even waterproof so you can wear it in the shower or at the gym. In fact, it even incorporates some fitness tracking features to enhance your gym experience. But the Link’s major pull is that you can store just about every file you’ll ever need on the wearable hard drive and then share or stream wherever you go – even if you don’t have an internet connection.

Link hooks up with an app that removes the file type restrictions associated with different platforms. For example, you can stream an iTunes playlist from your Link to a friend’s Android phone without having to download or convert anything. The wristband communicates with devices via peer to peer communication rather than using a router or internet connection – so when you’re done streaming, there is no digital imprint of your data left behind.

The team behind Link is raising money on IndieGoGo to launch their product, which by all accounts is kind of amazing. Its battery life is up to two weeks standby and up to 12 hours while streaming; it weighs just a little over nine ounces and boasts wireless transmission speeds of up to 1300 MB/s. This kind of security and convenience is going to cost you, though: you can pre-order the 1TB Link for $799, which is a hefty discount from the eventual retail price of $949. Smaller storage units of 512GB, 256GB, and 128GB are available for pre-order through the IndieGoGo campaign as well.

The post Un-Clouding: Wearable Hard Drive Carries 1TB of Data first appeared on Gajitz.

Storing all of your passwords on your computer might be convenient and easy, but it’s definitely not secure. The EyeLock Myris is also a convenient and easy way to store your passwords, but it’s exceptionally secure.

The small USB-powered device is a handheld iris scanner that keeps your passwords safe using biometric data. Every iris is different – your eyes are kind of like fingerprints, only more unique. The iris scanner can store the unique biometric iris data of up to five people, so everyone in your household can ditch the typed passwords.

The Myris takes a split-second image of your eyes whenever you want to sign into your computer or access a password-protected program or website. It scans more than 240 points of your irises in less than a second, providing a government-grade encrypted signature that keeps all of your data secure.

When you program the Myris, you can make your actual passwords as complex as you like to protect them from hackers – but there’s no need to remember them. The device stores them on-board, not on your computer, so they are well and truly secure. And the chances of getting a false positive from someone else holding the Myris up to their own eyes? About one in 1.5 million.

The post Eye Feel Safe: Biometric Iris Scanner Secures All Your Data first appeared on Gajitz.

The old Mission: Impossible TV series, secret agents received their missions via recordings that would self-destruct shortly after receipt. It was an effective method of keeping those secret missions private – as far as we know, the baddies never got ahold of any mission tapes, allowing the agents to successfully carry out their campaigns against evil.

These days, data is shared far more frequently and in so many ways it’s kind of mind-blowing. Even sensitive digital information is vulnerable to hackers, disgruntled employees, and the general public in some unintentional cases. Artist Diego Trujillo Pisanty has created an art piece that takes us back to a simpler time when data breaches were far less common because hard copies of documents are so much harder to steal than digital copies.

This Tape Will Self Destruct is a small printer that perfectly mixes the past and the present. It prints fictional Cold War images and texts with excerpts of actual NSA documents brought into the public eye by Edward Snowden. Shortly after the printer spits out its meaningless message, the paper self-ignites and fire consumes the printout, permanently erasing its information.

The project is an insightful exploration of the relationship we have with secrecy and data sharing. We expect to be informed at all times, but government agencies argue that some secrecy is necessary for national security. This little printer hearkens back to the pre-digital age when having information meant having a piece of paper in your hands or a memory in your mind rather than words on a screen or hard drive.

The post Information Burnout: Self-Destructing Message Printer first appeared on Gajitz.

Data security is a huge issue for businesses and individuals alike, and sometimes it seems almost impossible to keep ahead of the dirty tricks bad folks use to steal information. One of those tricks is using public USB charging points to either steal data or share malware with your mobile device. Since USB cables transmit both power and data, plugging into that public port can lead to some potentially long-lasting consequences.

Security company int3.cc has introduced a way to keep your device safe even when you’re charging at an unfamiliar USB port. They call it the USB Condom, though in reality it’s far less salacious than it sounds. The device is a bridge between your USB cord and the port you’re plugging into. It effectively blocks the data pins on your mobile device, turning your cable into a charge-only cable and putting the kibosh on any data transfer to or from your device.

The “condom” itself looks like a little piece of plastic with a port on one end and a USB plug on the other. It’s relatively unobtrusive and can be left on your USB cable at all times until you need to sync – then it’s just a matter of unplugging it. It may not be an especially pretty solution, but at a retail price of $10 it doesn’t have to be. And int3.cc makes a good point: “If you’re going to run around plugging your phone into strange USB ports, at least be safe about it.”

The post Plug + Play Solution to Data Theft Blocks USB Hijackers first appeared on Gajitz.