How to protect my pendrive or USB drive from data theft with SecurStick

The way of working is constantly evolving. In that sense, some 15 or 20 years ago it was very common to transport and use reports, catalogs, etc. Right now, we live in a time towards the transition to the digital world, in which paper is often replaced by other media for ecological reasons. Thus, for example, we work with shared files in the cloud and also with pendrives. In the case of USB memories, we must be very careful and we must find a way to maintain the security and privacy of our files. In this tutorial we are going to learn how to use SecurStick to protect your pendrive with this program.

The first thing we are going to do is explain why we must protect our USB memories and what consequences not doing so can have. Then we will talk about SecurStick to protect your pendrive in which we will see what it offers and how this program is used.

Why protect my pendrive and what are the consequences of not doing so

All users should take our security and privacy very seriously. In this regard, it is increasingly common to use USB sticks or external hard drives to collect our information. The problem is that we do not always apply the necessary measures to keep our documents safe. In fact, on many occasions we leave our removable USB drives such as pen drives unprotected.

protect my pendrive or USB drive from data theft with SecurStick

The reasons to use SecurStick to protect your pendrive can be:

  • Because it contains our confidential information. For example, we often keep contracts and receipts for our online banking operations. Also personal photos or videos related to our private life. An Excel with our accounting, invoices, a diary or whatever we want to keep private.
  • It may also be the case that we are using this pendrive for a secret project of our company. If it falls into the wrong hands, it can be a significant damage to our organization. In addition, accounting documents and private agreements could be added that, in the wrong hands, could be used for fraud and blackmail.
  • Another thing to keep in mind is that they are small and easy to lose. We carry them every day from one place to another and we tend to rush everywhere. In that sense, leaving them forgotten in a cafeteria while you work or being forgotten in a meeting with another company is the order of the day.

The loss of that USB memory brings, as a first consequence, a loss of prestige in our figure as a worker. Then regain the trust of your bosses or that other company we work with can be very complicated. In that sense, it could only affect your private life in which you could suffer blackmail or identity theft. It could also affect your work exclusively, in which case if it is very serious you could be fired. And in the worst case, it will affect both your work world and your private sphere.

We do not want to reach such serious situations, and that is why we must take action beforehand. For these reasons we must use SecurStick to protect your pendrive in which virtual drives will be created within that memory to put all the documents that we want to encrypt there.

Getting started and SecurStick setup

SecurStick , to protect your pendrive allows us to use it for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. It is a program that allows you to encrypt data on USB sticks and other discs. An important thing to note is that it is a software for private and free use . This tool, as we will see below, is very simple and easy to use to encrypt memories. Thus, we could create an encrypted section on a pendrive in a simple way. In addition, it is a program that does not require installation and all we have to do is download it, unzip it and copy it onto our USB memory. Then we run the application and follow its instructions. The first thing we have to do is go to the developer’s website by clicking on this link .

Next, we will download the version that best suits our operating system. In our case, it is Windows 10 64-bit for PC and, in addition, I will use version 1.1.2, which at this time is the most current. If there is a more modern version, we recommend using it because it will be more stable and secure and the steps will be very similar.

Then, once the file is downloaded, we unzip it and copy it to the pendrive that we want to protect. In our case the file is called SecurStick-x64 .

The next step we are going to take is to double click on SecurStick-x64 . Then an Internet Explorer browser will open, and to use SecurStick to protect your pendrive we must first perform some actions.

Here, above informs us that we are going to use 256-bit AES encryption to keep our files safe. We must also put a password of at least 5 characters that contain letters, numbers and special symbols such as @. In this article, to have a strong password, we recommend that it be 12 characters long and contain uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.

Next, after typing the password twice, a screen like this will appear. It tells us that we are ready to use our safe area.

In case you hadn’t noticed, at the bottom of the taskbar you have a black icon that indicates that the program is running.

If you click on it, a Command Prompt window will appear and this window belongs to SecurStick. In addition, it indicates that if we close it, it will leave the safe zone that we have created.

Now we are going to go to Windows explorer. There we will see how a new unit has been created where we can safely save our files.

That is where we will finally be storing the information we want to protect. However, in this case, so that you can see how it would be accessed in a normal way, we are going to close the program’s command prompt window.

How to use this tool to protect your pendrive and files

Every time we want to see the files that we have in our area, all we have to do is click on the executable file that we have on the pendrive. In my case, as I mentioned before, it would be to double click on SecurStick-x64 . Next, we will see a screen that we had not seen until now.

All we have to do is put our password and click on the Login button. Then from the file explorer we will begin to operate in our safe area that will be hidden and protected from prying eyes.

Then we can copy and paste all the files we want. We can also drag a file from another Windows file explorer window to copy it. And not only that, we can also create a new text file by clicking with the right mouse button, and then we can modify, delete or edit it. In addition, if SecurStick is working we can save a Word file or any other type of document with which we are working in our private area.

Finally, as you may have seen, SecurStick to protect your pendrive becomes a very interesting alternative.