I reviewed the Integral CRYPTO-C DUAL — here’s why it’s perfect for secure business use

Integral CRYPTO-C DUAL: 30-second review

There’s plenty of secure flash drives out there, and Integral is one of the lead names and with the CRYPTO-C DUAL encrypted USB, the company has made one of the smallest and easiest-to-use options available. The drive itself looks just like any other USB flash drive, with the USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 1 connector enabling fast transfer speeds from your computer to the drive. It also differs from some of the cheaper USB keys on the market, including the Integral Secure 360-C encrypted USB key by featuring a hardware encryption chip rather than just using software-based encryption.

This flash drive uses hardware encryption to ensure files on the drive remain safe. During the set-up process, you have the option to set both a master password and a user password, utilising the Dual Lock application.

This application is minimal and runs from a disc image on the USB. Once the correct password has been entered, it opens a folder named ‘Secure’, where you can create your own folders and start adding your documents and files.

When it comes to features outside of secure storage, these are limited. In reality, Integral has designed this drive to be simple to use and extremely robust in terms of security. While it might not have many of the advanced network features of more complex drives, it should suffice for most companies needing a way to securely store or distribute company information while maintaining security.

Through the test, I was impressed, firstly, with the ease of set-up and the ability to create both master and user passwords, with the obvious advantages that bring over a single-password device. I also found that the data transfer speeds were decent, and because of the FIPS 197 certification, the automatic locking every time the drive was disconnected or the screensaver activated meant that this drive felt incredibly secure.

Unlike other drives that can also be used as working USB sticks, this is purely designed as a secure drive, essentially for transporting files from one location to another or keeping somewhere safe. That simple use works exceptionally well, but as ever, this level of security is reflected in the price.

Integral CRYPTO-C DUAL: Price & availability

The Integral CRYPTO-C Dual encrypted USB is widely available both online and in stores. It can be purchased directly from the Integral website at integral.com or from most online retailers, including Amazon.com.

• Score: 4.5/5

Integral CRYPTO-C DUAL: Design & build

At first glance, this USB flash drive might surprise you — it looks like nothing more than a standard USB key that might have been handed out at a tech event during the early 2000s. The visual difference is the USB Type-C connector rather than a USB Type-A connector on the end. Check the drive over, and you’ll see the rotating connector cover and the main body of the drive, but there’s nothing more than the graphics to highlight that this is significantly more than a standard flash drive.

Really, the first thing to differentiate this from a standard storage drive is the graphics on the metal cap. A quick check over the body, and you might feel that it’s a slightly higher quality than a typical storage drive, but there’s very little in it. Then there’s the price — for the 256GB version reviewed here, it’s just over $120 / £120.

For that money, you do get a good-quality USB flash drive, but what you’re really paying for is not the standard build quality — although that is very good — but the level of security this USB flash drive has to offer which is based in the hardware rather than the just the software.

Upon plugging in the drive, a read only drive opens containing the files on the root, including the standard autorun, terms and conditions, user manual, and the Dual Lock application, which enables your access to the drive’s contents.

The drive contents are read-only, so even if you wanted to, there’s no way to delete these files from the drive or add anything. Double-clicking the Dual Lock icon — in the case of this review, tested on macOS — launches you straight into the Dual Lock application.

Again, this application is read-only and serves as an interface that enables you, on the first pass, to set up the login details for the drive. Before doing this, you’re required to enter your name, phone number, and address so that the drive is tied to you or your company. Then, on the next screen, you set up the master password — a top-level password that can be utilised by a company before the key is handed out to employees. After that, you set up a user password, which is created by the user once they receive the key. From that point on, every time you open the Dual Lock application, it boots up the CRYPTO-C Dual interface, where you enter the user password to gain access to the drive.

Navigation around the drive contents is relatively limited. You have the ‘Secure’ folder, where you can create your own folder structure and add the files you want, but navigating outside of this folder’s not possible.

• Design & build: 4/5

Integral CRYPTO-C DUAL: Features

When it comes to features, the Integral CRYPTO-C Dual encrypted USB is a little more feature-packed than many secure USB flash drives of this size. First of all, it comes in five different capacities, including 16, 32, 64, 128, and the 256GB version reviewed here.

What makes this stand out against many other secure USB drives is the fact that it offers FIPS 197 encryption certification. This is quite a step up from most other USB keys — it’s a US government security standard that is trusted by the legal, finance, government, and healthcare sectors. On top of this, it also has military-grade 256-bit hardware encryption. So, while the device is relatively small and simple, it has high-level security built in.

One of the strong points of this security drive is that it utilises the latest USB Type-C connector. While it’s not the most recent generation, being USB 3.2 Gen 1, it still offers decent transfer speeds — those speeds quoted by integral see read speeds of up to 160MB per second and write of up to 130MB per second. So, if you have plenty of documents to transfer securely to this drive, it should handle the task relatively quickly. However, compared with some of the latest SSDs, these speeds may seem a little slow.

As part of the built-in security, automatic protection measures are enabled through encryption. If someone tries to log into the drive more than six times unsuccessfully, all of the data on the USB key will be securely destroyed — again keeping your information safe.

For many companies, one of the key features here is the ability to purchase a selection of these drives and hand them out to employees with sensitive data, presentations, or other information that needs to be kept secure. These drives can be set-up to have a master password, set by the company and a user password, set by the employee. This essentially means if a user forgets their password, the company can easily reset the drive or password by logining in as the master.

• Features: 4.5/5

Integral CRYPTO-C DUAL: Performance

The main focus of the Integral CRYPTO-C Dual encrypted USB is obviously security, rather than transfer speed — but also durability, to ensure that it’s built and manufactured to stand up to day-to-day use when being carried around.

Obviously, being a small drive, it is highly portable, so during the test, I placed it in my bag as well as my jacket pocket to ensure that, after a week or two, it would be able to withstand a good amount of physical knocks and bashes. While not water- or dustproof, it is pretty resilient. After this physical test, it did show slight signs of wear, but its performance was completely unaffected.

At the start of the test, I had already run through the set-up process, after which, when you insert the drive, the drive icon appears on the desktop as you would expect. However, double-clicking the icon only gives you access to the read-only drive image and not the contents of the drive – to access your files or move files to the drive, you need to log in.

To log in, you double-click the Dual Lock icon that then opens the CRYPTO-C Dual login screen; this is where, through the set-up, you’re asked for a few details — including your name, phone number, and address — as well as setting up the master password (for your company) and the user password (for the person actually using the drive).

Once that’s done, the ‘Secure’ folder opens, which is where you can load or copy all the files you want on this drive. If you want to set up your own folder structure, this can easily be done, and then you can copy over your files as you would to any other drive. It’s worth noting that this is a secure drive meant for archiving, not for active use. So, if you try to utilise files directly from the drive, you’ll find it exceptionally slow. However, transfer rates when simply copying files across are relatively acceptable.

The interesting part of this drive’s performance isn’t the transfer speed or capacity — it’s the level of security and how the drive protects your files. In that respect, this drive does exactly what many of the more expensive secure drives do: it protects the content until the password has been entered. When you insert the drive into your machine, as a disk image is loaded rather than the partition, the app acts as a gatekeeper to your files. Only after entering the password is the partition with your files mounted; until that point, it’s just not accessible.

During testing, I attempted to access the contents of the drive using a variety of terminal commands and software, but none came close to seeing or accessing the secure drive. With most software-encrypted devices, you can at least see the mounted drive or run applications that may eventually get through the encryption. However, here, because the drive isn’t visible, you can’t run any software to decrypt it — because there’s no drive to decrypt until the correct password is entered. This is all part of the higher FIPS certification that gives this seemingly simple USB flash drive such a high level of security.

• Performance: 5/5

Should you buy the Integral CRYPTO-C DUAL?

There are some devices that are just deceptive, and at first glance, the Integral CRYPTO-C Dual doesn’t look like anything other than a standard USB flash drive. There’s nothing outwardly special about the design. It’s well made, but with the metal rotating cap and plastic body, there’s very little that makes this drive stand out.

On closer inspection, you have the logo on the metal cap that highlights it as an Integral CRYPTO-C Dual flash drive, but apart from that, you don’t have anything else to go on.

The Dual Lock software works exceptionally well when in use. The design does look very dated, but if you’re using this for corporate purposes, you’re probably not going to worry about aesthetics — you’re more concerned with the functionality and reliability of the security.

When it comes to that security, it is absolutely secure — beyond anything I could do to get through it. Hardware-level encryption really does take things up a notch compared to software encryption, meaning even experienced IT engineers would struggle to get anywhere near those files, if at all. The fact that it has FIPS 197 certification gives the clear impression that you’re not going to get access to the files without proper credentials.

At the end of the test, I feel this key is suited to any business that needs to keep files safe when out on the road. The level of encryption is beyond what most people could even comprehend cracking, and the fact that you have both company-level and user-level passwords is another great feature. If you do need employees — or yourself — to carry sensitive documents outside of your business, then this USB flash drive is a great option.

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