Fountain Valley, Calif. — Kingston will ship its first USB drives with Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) certification to dealers this month.
The DataTraveler BlackBox line of USB drives meet federal security requirements set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and can be used in government applications.
The waterproof drives feature 256-bit hardware-based AES encryption via a dedicated processor which automatically encrypts and decrypts data on the fly, the company said. After ten consecutive failed password attempts, the drive will lock down.
The BlackBox drives offer 24MBps read speeds and up to 20MBps write speeds. They will be available in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB capacities for $165, $242, and $424, respectively.
Drives with FIPs-certified security technologies have just begun to penetrate the flash drive market. Last week, SanDisk announced their first line of FIPs drives.
