The IronKey Password Manager is more secure than using password manager software on a regular USB flash drive for several reasons:
- The IronKey dual-encrypts your passwords with software and hardware encryption using different keys.
- The IronKey architecture prevents brute-force password guessing attacks in hardware, protecting your passwords in case your IronKey is lost or stolen. Regular USB flash drives, and even USB flash drives with software encryption do not offer this protection.
- The IronKey Password Manager does not store your passwords in a file on the file system of the flash drive. Regular USB flash drives, and even flash drives with software encryption, can allow the password database or file system to be copied off the flash drive where hackers can use brute-force password guessing attacks to break the cryptography and obtain your passwords.
- The IronKey has a secure online backup service, allowing you to recover your passwords in case you lose your IronKey device. This means you don’t have to have multiple copies of your password database floating around.
- It is hard to trust the myriad of password manager software tools that you can download off the Internet, as you typically cannot even find out the name of the companies that created them. Although somewhat unlikely, it would be difficult to ensure that some of these tools were not written by identity thieves for stealing your passwords. In contrast, the IronKey was developed by a team of well-known security professionals. IronKey is a California company backed by major Silicon Valley venture capitalists, and has partnerships with some of the largest security and electronics companies in the world.
- The IronKey system was designed with security and privacy as the number one goals. Other password manager tools are designed by programmers who are focused on convenience, and who may add some encryption as an afterthought. IronKey goes far beyond simple software encryption to protect your passwords.
