If you like biometric USB drives and the like for the ultimate in individualized security you’ll be interested to know this technology is also available for the doors of your home. Kwikset is making available for purchase shortly a biometric-based door lock solution known as SmartScan.

SmartScan works by scanning the sub-dermal part of your finger to unlock its deadbolt. Assuming no one hacks off your finger (in which case you have bigger problems) you should be able to enjoy keyless entry each time you come home. In case your finger is hacked off though there’s also back up key usage to gain entry.

If a finger print scanner isn’t quite enough for you to feel comfortable with keeping your data on a portable USB flash drive you will want to take a look at the Irikon Flash memory device from Rehoboth Technology.

This thumb drive has biometric security similar to many flash drives that use finger print scanners except that this one requires a scan of your eye, or your iris to be exact, to authenticate your access of the drive. It can remember up to 20 different irises and is USB 1.1 and 2.0 compatible. Not a whole lot of detail is given about how the iris scanning part works other than you need to look into the iris camera from no further away than 6 cm.

The Irikon has an on-board rechargeable battery that charges up when it’s connected. …

This Lock Alarm from Skymall comes with a 24 inch cable and will alarm with a shrill of 100 decibels if tampered with. Use the cable and combination lock to secure your bike, laptop or briefcase and if the lock is tampered with or the cable is cut and a sound equivalent to the loudness of a jackhammer will bring some attention.

The Lock Alarm also has a motion sensor that can be set to go off with any movement. A short time delay lets you open the lock with the combination before the alarm sounds, but if you get it wrong a couple times get ready to cover your ears. It runs on batteries (which can only be removed when unlocked) and it retails for just under $25. While the cable is nice on this one, we’re …

SanDisk today is offering business computer users some serious new security USB flash drives for protecting valuable data. These drives are the Cruzer Professional ($55 to $145) and the Cruzer Enterprise ($75 to $185).

The SanDisk Cruzer Professional, available in storage sizes up to 4GB, offers hardware-based 256-bit AES encryption. This is on top of letting you create a password protected private area on the drive for your eyes only. The Cruzer Professional gets a maximum read speed of 24MB per second.

The Cruzer Enterprise, meanwhile, has the same hardware protection while also taking the password option one step further. It requires that all of the drive’s contents be complex password protected. While we aren’t exactly sure what complex means we assume the four letter password of your dog’s name won’t work with this drive.

Yoggie has announced the unveiling of its new Pico USB stick used to protect your PC from incoming data through mediums such as your wireless adapter, LAN or Bluetooth. Similar to the Gatekeeper series, Pico is a Linux based software running on the small thumb-sized device with a built-in 520MHz processor and 128MB of RAM to keep those protection-processing resources out of your computer and in the device.

In an enterprise network, most of the protection for computers is provided by separate appliances protecting the whole network. At home any type of spam protection or firewall software usually runs directly on the computer, taking up memory and processing power. With the Pico this is all taken care of within the stick which simply plugs into your USB port.

The Yoggie Pico runs 13 different applications providing protection from …

Digg This was the last post on the Digg Blog yesterday by founder Kevin Rose posting the one-key-to-rule-them-all encryption key that can be used to break the protection on secure HD DVD and Blu-Ray discs.

The issue of breaking the AACS encryption code of HD DVD’s came about very shortly after the DVD’s using the encryption was released - 8 days after it was released to be exact. An individual called Muslix64 posted information to compromise the HD DVD protection back in December, and the following month was able to use the same method to compromise the protection of Blu-Ray discs as well.

Since then another individual found that there was one “master” key that could be used to break the encryption of all the discs instead of having to find the individual key for …

A company out of California called SubRosaSoft has just released a new product called the MacLockPick, and it does just what the name implies. The device is able to extract OS user passwords, logins for different Apple applications, website history and passwords to different visited sites and more.

The MacLockPick software is installed onto a USB flash drive that when inserted into the USB drive of a computer running Mac OS X, it will start extracting all the private data off of the computer and save it to the USB drive in an organized little database. The owner of the MacLockPick can then take the data pack to their own computer running OS X, Windows or Linux and read the data.

This little “live forensics” intended device can get 24 different points of data from the OS X system, including everything from the operating system login for the current …

If you’re looking for another layer of security to protect your PC from the wild ravages of hackers and viruses, you may be interested in picking up the Databreaker. This piece of hardware connects to your wall socket/power bar and then to your router/modem, acting as another break-wall on top of the firewall and computer protection that you should already have.

What the Databreaker does is turn off your computer’s connection to the internet when you’re not accessing information, that way if someone were trying to access your machine they would have no entry mechanism when the actual electronic connection is severed. If you’re unfamiliar with firewalls or have doubts about the security of your system the $39.95 spent on the Databreaker may give you peace of mind especially if you tend to leave your computer on overnight or plugged in for long periods of time when …

It’s the perfect product for people that can’t figure out how to set up their own personal encrypted network. EM-SEC Technologies has the solution to those technically-challenged folk: just paint your home with the EM-SEC Coating System and your wireless network is secure. People inside can still access the network but anyone attempting to access it from outside won’t be able to because of what’s on your walls.

The EM-SEC paint works like this: the paint uses a series of water-based shielding products that restrict the passage of airborne RF signals, thus blocking the transmission of the frequency from your hub or modem. Naturally this kind of technological breakthrough was at first designed to shield government and military centers and protect their sensitive data streams but now private business and non-geek home owners can get in on the …

On Monday Apple released both an updated version of its iTunes digital music software and updates to the QuickTime media player software to fix eight security flaws.

According to a security alert from Apple, the 7.1.5 version of QuickTime fixes security issues involving how the player handles certain types of “maliciously-crafted” files including QuickTime, MIDI, 3GP, PICT and QTIF. The update also adds some functionality updates with the new version which can be downloaded through the Software Update preferences or from the QuickTime download page.

iTunes 7.1 adds features for improved sorting, full screen Cover Flow and most significantly additional support for the upcoming Apple TV. “Using iTunes 7.1, you can now enjoy your favorite iTunes movies, TV shows, music, and more from the comfort of your living room with Apple TV. iTunes 7.1 also supports a new full screen …

If you’ve ever wanted one of those cool eye-in-the-sky cameras like they have at casinos under the tinted domes in the ceiling, Canon has recently introduced a new professional grade version with some really nice and unexpected features.

This is the VB-C300 Wide-Angle Pan/Tilt/Zoom (PTZ) network camera from Canon that also has some high quality video recording software available to allow you watch and record the video stream across a LAN or the internet. It is optionally powered by the actual LAN cable making installation a lot easier. Simply mount the camera and attach your LAN line and you are powering, controlling and watching video from one connection.

“The addition of the VB-C300 PTZ Camera and introduction of VK-64 / VK-16 Version 1.3 Network Video Recording Software further expands the versatility of Canon’s Network Video Solutions products and provides installers with more options to …

Any concerns about losing the data on your USB flash drive due to damaging it would be dispelled with this IronDrive from R&D Electronics. The rugged flash memory device has been tested to withstand moisture, vibration, shock testing from all angles, caustic agents, EMI, and even nuclear effects.

The IronDrive comes in different capacities from 32MB to 4GB and can be customized if needed. The device connects via a 12 inch USB 2.0 cable and is able to transfer data to and from Windows XP/POS/CE as well as Linux and VxWorks. It is also rated to operate from -40 C to +85 C. The first concern that came to mind was whether or not the memory would last as long as its enclosure, and the IronDrive has a MTBF (Mean time between failures) of 4.66 million hours and is rated to 5 million write and erase …

You may want to set a side a little time for some updates and rebooting on Tuesday, February 13th. Microsoft has 12 security updates scheduled in their monthly security bulletin communication that list out various Security Bulletins affecting Microsoft software products.

Eight of the security bulletins scheduled to be released Tuesday affect Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office with seven of them having severity rating of ‘Critical’ with the rest rated as ‘Important’. The remaining four bulletins range from ‘Important’ to ‘Critical’ and will affect Windows with Visual Studio, Step-by-Step Interactive Training, Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) and multiple security applications that run on Windows including OneCare, Antigen, and Wiindows Defender among others.

Along with these high-security updates, Microsoft will be releasing another update to the Malicious Software Removal Tool and 10 additional non-security related high-priority updates.

These security updates from Microsoft are a common …

In keeping up with the regular installments of iPod accessories, we ran across this locking iPod case from Elecom via Akihibara News.

We’ve seen some strange iPod accessories in the past months, including the iDisguise and a bullet proof case which both have different angles on protecting the player.

This iPod accessory appears to be a combination lock with a wire cable which can lock the audio player to another object to prevent it from being stolen. Simply remove the top, slide the iPod into the case and replace the top while securing the cable to a stationary object.

I’m struggling coming up with a reasonable situation where something like this would be necessary, but I’m starting to think that necessity is not the mother of iPod accessory inventions. You could probably lock the device to something at home to keep your little brother from …

NecSoft, a Japanese software company, has released some new authentication software that uses facial recognition as a different type of biometric security in order to gain access to a Windows PC.

In order to authenticate, a web cam views the face in front of it and matches it to an existing photo tied to the user account. The system also has a network management component in the works to allow a network administration of the facial recognition authentication for individual client PC’s.

As an added security feature, all of the images taken when trying to authenticate with the web cam are saved by the system. This, unlike trying multiple passwords, identifies the individual attempting to gain access to the system through the BiodeLogon facial recognition application.

We had reported last October about a Japanese mobile phone from NTT DoCoMo that also utilized …