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For those who need to keep their thumb drive contents private, the Lexar's JumpDrive Solo Vault offers some of the best protection available.

It’s really not the end of the world if someone steals a thumb drive with all of your last year’s term papers on it. While thieves might get a giggle out of Use of the Deus Ex Machina Principle in Voltron, you’re not in any real trouble. If it’s full of tax forms and medical records, though, you had better hope it has some protection.

Lexar’s new JumpDrive Solo Vault is one USB drive that’s up to the task of keeping snoopers out. With 256-bit AES encryption that passes the rigorous Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 Level 1 (the same one Uncle Sam demands for government agencies), it should be one solid way to keep your most private information private.

With no administrative rights or application that has to be run, users simply plug the drive in, set up their own passwords, and begin storing files. Even if hackers manage to transfer all the raw data on the drive to another device, the encryption will prevent it from being read without a password. Built-in compression can also be activated to pack extra data – up to twice the capacity listed – onto thedrive.

The Lexar JumpDrive Solo Vault comes in 2GB and 4GB variants, which retail for $90 and $130, respectively.