Kingston dominates the secure portable storage market with its IronKey brand of self-encrypting USB flash drives and portable SSDs. At the 2023 International CES, the company showed off its five top products from the IronKey brand. These include the IronKey Locker+ 50, the IronKey S1000, the IronKey Vault Privacy 50, the IronKey Keypad 200, and the IronKey Vault Privacy 80ES. The Locker+ 50 is an affordable secure encrypted flash drive with self-processing XTS-AES encryption and automatic cloud backup. It comes in capacities of up to 128 GB, and offers transfer rates of up to 145 MB/s reads with up to 115 MB/s writes, over 5 Gbps USB 3.1. The IronKey S1000 is a big step-up from the Locker+ 50, and features an on-device cryptochip for a self-contained root of trust, besides hardware-accelerated encryption without involving the host machine. It comes in capacities of up to 128 GB, and offers transfer rates of up to 230 MB/s reads, with up to 240 MB/s writes, leveraging 5 Gbps USB 3.1.
The Vault Privacy 50 series is usually what enterprises buy in bulk, with hardware-accelerated XTS-AES, and 256-bit AES. It can be had with USB type-A or type-C (Vault Privacy 50C), and comes in capacities of up to 128 GB, pushing data at up to 250 MB/s reads, with up to 180 MB/s writes. The Keypad 200 is one of the most recognizable of Kingston’s IronKey products. It meets FIPS 140-3 Level 3 data-security standards, and a physical keypad that unlocks the device without having to use any software running on the host. It transfers at speeds of up to 145 MB/s reads with up to 115 MB/s writes. Lastly, there’s the Vault Privacy 80ES, a 5 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1 portable SSD that comes in capacities of up to 2 TB, a touchscreen-based on-device user-interface to lock/unlock without any software running on the host machine, and transfer rates of up to 250 MB/s.
