A portable storage device can drain company data from the storage systems designed to protect it. Some portable USB drives are built with enough capacity to store hundreds of gigabytes of data. That much data sitting on such highly mobile devices can be easy to lose.

Most mobile storage vendors have added models that include encryption; now Apricorn, a Poway, CA-based personal storage vendor, is offering the Aegis Bio line of portable drives.

The drives feature real-time hardware-based encryption plus a biometric device that allows access to the drive's contents after the user's fingerprint is verified. Biometric sensors incorporated into portable devices have had mixed success. The device's ability to identify a print can be compromised if the fingerprint is altered by cuts, calluses or other skin conditions.

Aegis Bio drives range in capacity from 80GB to 250GB and use a biometric reader from UPEK called TouchStrip. List prices for Apricorn's drives range from $179 to $379.

--Rich Castagna