Intro

Flash drives have become almost as ubiquitous today as the 3.5" floppy drive was yesterday. Every I.T. guru I know who is worth a damn keeps at least one flash drive with them wherever they go. I've got one at my alternate job with "official" files and patches on them, one at home for the kids to use to take their homework to school, and one that stays on my keychain with my "other" files and patches on it. This is the drive I am always careful with. There is nothing really illegal on it, but I do have some utilities that allows me to bypass security settings, identify passwords, and some other files which makes it easier to work on locked or corrupted computers. I make it a point to never leave that flash drive laying around because if someone saw the files I use, they may not understand why I keep this software with me.

There are some solutions to encrypt and hide data on a flash drive, but they usually requires clicking around a bit and entering a password to get to the files. Kanguru has a much more elegant and more simple solution to accessing your protected files, just touch your flash drive. Kanguru has released the Kanguru Biometric Flash Drive line that sports a built-in biometric fingerprint sensor which ensures security and protection for your data.

I'm familiar with Kanguru products since I've been using one of their flash drives for almost 4 years now. This old Silver Kanguru drive has been through the washer twice, the dryer once, been dropped, stepped on, and banged about more than I care to remember, and the cats decided to hide the cap from me about a year ago. But it is still going strong, definitely a testament to the durability of Kanguru's regular flash drives.

Package

The Kanguru Bio Drive arrived in a nondescript brown box which held within another plain white box with a window allowing you to see the drive. Inside, there is the drive, a Win98/ME mini driver disk with a .pdf manual, a pad holding 5 stickers with the drive serial number on it, a 39" USB extension cable, and a single page of instructions. Since the drive requires a fingerprint to activate, the extension cable with come in mighty handy for folks who only have USB ports on the back of their computer.

The Drive

The drive is a sexy little Gold number with a small bracket for a lanyard at one end. The drive is only 3 inches long, 1 inch wide, and 1/2 inch thick in the center, and weighs in at 19 grams so it won't add a lot of mass or weight to your pocket. It is rated to take up to a 1,000G shock but that isn't a statistic I tested. I'm not quite sure why Kanguru decided to use a smoked plastic piece to cover up the fingerprint sensor other than for aesthetic reasons, I know that after some time in a pocket it will get scratched up and possibly broken. It looks good though.

Pulling the cover off reveals the fingerprint sensor and the USB connector. The sensor is small, just 1/2 inch long and under 1/2 inch wide, but in testing that was plenty of room for it to recognize a print. One thing I would be damn careful of is to ensure that the recognition window stays scratch free or it could become too scarred to be effective. The sensor is rated for a false acceptance rate of only 1 in 1 million, and a false rejection rate of only 1 in 1 thousand. It also allows for a recognizable rotation angle of 15 degrees; those stats are very good and rival or exceed other biometric access devices I use in my other job. The Kanguru Bio Drive will store and recognize up to 5 different fingerprints, but if you buy this drive you probably don't want to share it.

One last point on the look of the drive, the fins on top of the drive protect a usage LED that is Blooo..., that's a nice change from the Orange, Red, and Green we usually see on a flash drive.