Hi Dave, I think you miss Skeptic's very valid point. Your site makes various claims - "Surf privately", "Protect your identity", etc. There is a technical market which will understand the claims made and some of the pitfalls involved. However you are clearly marketing the IronKey at non-technical users who have heard about all these Internet demons - identity theft, password snooping, and so on.
A typical user might buy your product and then think "well that's me sorted, I'm all safe now". They'll take it with them on holiday and use it in an Internet cafe and believe that they're 100% safe. They'd be wrong to make that assumption, and your marketing is a bit misleading in this respect.
For example you strongly imply that using a non-IronKey results in using inferior encryption algorithms. Techies will know that's not true and know of other ways to achieve the same results anyway, while non-techies will likely have some other aspect of the overall usage as a critical weak point, if one exists.
Your computer doesn't have to be "hopelessly infected with malware" to validate Skeptic's point. It simply has to be one over which you a) have no overall control or b) don't keep secured and up to date by conventional means (antivirus, patches, current application releases, etc). That said, many computers *are* hopelessly infected with malware, and the users will still buy your device and look to you to somehow now be protecting them. They won't be any the wiser. Your device cannot offer a technical solution to what is really a social problem, one of a lack of basic computer maintenance know-how or Internet awareness.
If the computer IS secure (in terms of a) and b) above) then there are existing products which can perform many of the IronKey's functions, for free. For example I use a normal USB stick with a copy of TrueCrypt (http://www.truecrypt.org/), and a TrueCrypt container installed on it, all set up for two factor authentication. I use XeroBank to browse from the container via the Tor network (http://xerobank.com/xB_browser.html).
The main benefits I see to the IronKey are its physical characteristics - it looks solidly built and is coffee proof (handy) - and for use in specific areas in controlled environments.
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Response to Response to Skeptic
Hi Dave, I think you miss Skeptic's very valid point. Your site makes various claims - "Surf privately", "Protect your identity", etc. There is a technical market which will understand the claims made and some of the pitfalls involved. However you are clearly marketing the IronKey at non-technical users who have heard about all these Internet demons - identity theft, password snooping, and so on.
A typical user might buy your product and then think "well that's me sorted, I'm all safe now". They'll take it with them on holiday and use it in an Internet cafe and believe that they're 100% safe. They'd be wrong to make that assumption, and your marketing is a bit misleading in this respect.
For example you strongly imply that using a non-IronKey results in using inferior encryption algorithms. Techies will know that's not true and know of other ways to achieve the same results anyway, while non-techies will likely have some other aspect of the overall usage as a critical weak point, if one exists.
Your computer doesn't have to be "hopelessly infected with malware" to validate Skeptic's point. It simply has to be one over which you a) have no overall control or b) don't keep secured and up to date by conventional means (antivirus, patches, current application releases, etc). That said, many computers *are* hopelessly infected with malware, and the users will still buy your device and look to you to somehow now be protecting them. They won't be any the wiser. Your device cannot offer a technical solution to what is really a social problem, one of a lack of basic computer maintenance know-how or Internet awareness.
If the computer IS secure (in terms of a) and b) above) then there are existing products which can perform many of the IronKey's functions, for free. For example I use a normal USB stick with a copy of TrueCrypt (http://www.truecrypt.org/), and a TrueCrypt container installed on it, all set up for two factor authentication. I use XeroBank to browse from the container via the Tor network (http://xerobank.com/xB_browser.html).
The main benefits I see to the IronKey are its physical characteristics - it looks solidly built and is coffee proof (handy) - and for use in specific areas in controlled environments.