Swiss Information – Tourism & Products

Swiss Flash 8gb

Introducing the latest generation info carriers from Victorinox – Victorinox Slim and Slim Duo. Their distinctive design and slim dimensions make them two of the most progressed business tools available today. These high performance portable info storage appliances provide up to 64GB (2 x 64GB for Slim Duo) of detachable storage for your important files, images, and demonstrations as well as secure selective information encryption technology that may only be accessed through your personal password. The Victorinox Slim and Slim Duo also include all the ordinary pocket knife functions such as blade, nail file, scissors, and key ring making it an necessary life style accessory. For frequent travelers the Victorinox Slim and Slim Duo are available in flight safe, bladeless body that are permitted to be carried on airplanes.

Most helpful client reviews

5 of 6 humans found the following review helpful.
Good drive; Victorinox dropped the ball on software
By Spetsy
Wall of text, but I want to share a exhaustive review since when I purchased this I couldn't find a single one. I in truth hope this genuinely verbose review will help numerous humans make decisions. Except for software, I do give this thing five stars. If you just want the drive and are gonna ditch the software, I say go for it.

$60 for 8GB is a very steep price for a flash drive, and even I am not more than willing to pay rather that much for aesthetics. It is a very beautiful thumb drive and the way it folds and is held in place makes it good for a keychain where you won't lose the cap. However, it does not merely fold out - there is a hook assemblage and the flash drive portion comes out completely. Good because then if it's on a keychain you won't have to remove the flash drive from the keychain when you use it, bad because it's more or less discouraging and hindering to detach. The "hook" is designed to be multipurpose, so you may leave the drive attached to the body for the duration of use.

Drive itself works at expected USB2.0 speed. This is not a very physically lasting drive - it is a slimline, meaning it will only plug into half of the USB slot; it lacks the aluminum borders to stablize it when plugged in. Be very careful with this or you may break it. That said, from a heavy security standpoint it makes it having little impact to be destroyed if confronted by an adversary. Supposedly this drive is waterproof, but the user manual cautions versus moisture. I wouldn't test it, either way.

I find no proof of hardware encryption (though it may mean hardware *accelerated* for it is AES encrypting, as it prepared the secure container very quickly; my processor does aid AES-NI, so it may have applied that), it's all done through the included software (update this without delay at secure.victorinox.com - a VeriSign bug makes it unusable until you do).

The secure container was invented without apparent effort and mounts each time without problems. That part of the software is gorgeous good and Victorinox claims it's uncrackable (to the best of my knowledge, there was not a success in Victorinox' CES contest to crack it last year). However... The rest of it... docks three stars - it's slow, rather buggy, has a garish UI skin, exceedingly fixed functionality and seems very unstable at times. It has crashed on me twice. Problems:
* IMPORTANT: Software requires administrator privileges, making this unfitting for domain/business use where that is restricted.
* Password for access to the software is stored hashed in a plaintext .ini file. Repeat: it IS securely hashed, but this is a potential vulnerability to a hash collision for a well-equipped and committed adversary. Note that you CAN make your encryption container password dissimilar than the one for the secure container, but this will give access to anything not in the container as well as the included passwords manager. To non-paranoid people: don't worry, this is well-secure sufficient for most persons unless you're a robot spy or something.
* Password manager seems to store passwords in a hashed/encrypted file in the unsecured percentage of the drive. I'd prefer if it were on the encrypted container, but it's pretty secure. Again, to non-paranoid people: a great deal secure enough, only a complaint regarding the theory of security posture.
* Sync choices and password manager seem to randomly not update. My sync folders are still in the settings files on the drive, but do not appear in the program. Sync only synchronizes numerous of the files and folders for no apparent reason (it seems to just stop). Same with the password manager - on the last try, it only remembered the introductory password I tried to give it.

Overall? Honestly I commend it to someone who doesn't mind spending the extra cash (especially if they don't plan on using the software. I give it 5 stars barring software). A seemingly solid USB drive with reasonable security (it is supposedly FIPS 140-2 level 2 compliant, which means in addition to being US Government-approved in terms of algorithms it will show proof of physical tampering, but since it's a Swiss company this is probably just a rumour). It may also be my computer - I've been having trouble with this install of Vista for a while. I surely like mine - it accents my keychain nicely, but is low-profile sufficient it doesn't draw attention. I find very few redeeming calibers in the software (Which is ironically it is main retail point). Still, I like it, though will in all probability replace the software with dissimilar security systems.

6 of 8 humans found the following review helpful.
Misleading Amazon published "Technical Details"
By Fernando
Mac users beware!

In Amazon's web page of this fine Victorinox product, under the "Technical Details" section, it is stated both "Removable 32GB USB Flash Drive with Password-Protected Secure Data Encryption" and "Software Compatible with Windows® XP/Vista/Windows® 7 & Mac OS X Snow Leopard and above".

The basi statement may mislead the potential client to assume there is a great deal of form of hardware encryption. That would be a untrue assumption, since there is no hardware encryption at all. But there's more. The clumsy encryption software is Windows-only! Hey, Amazon, I thought you've said "Software Compatible with Windows® XP/Vista/Windows® 7 & Mac OS X Snow Leopard and above"!

This is not Victorinox fault since their website product page mentions very distinctly that the provided software is Windows-only and require admin rights.

Now, Amazon, exclusively because of such misleading technical details in your website I have expended U$158.99 in a fine flash drive which, to me, without Mac OS X encryption, is pretty much useless.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
32 gb drive failed after 4 months
By Kermit
Bought the 32 gb drive 4 months ago due to the rare combining of compact size and it is durable-looking keyring attachment (those on former drives would break off). At the time I thought it was worth the premium price. It worked fine until today, when all it is contents were lost after procedure use; now no computer recognizes it in spite of attempts to salvage the drive (nevermind the lost files). Would think twice before spending this much on a seemingly undependable product.

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