Lexar JumpDrive Secure II USB Flash Drive - Mac & PC Support

Lexar's New Security Software

As its name implies, the major focus of the JumpDrive Secure II is its security software.  To be honest though, there is no more security that the JumpDrive Secure II offers over the JumpDrive Lightning; they both use the same general 256-bit AES encryption software.  Instead of more security, the biggest improvement that the JumpDrive Secure II offers is an updated security application, one that happens to work in both Windows XP and OS X.

Lexar's Secure II Dashboard application, running in OS X 10.4.2

The Lexar Dashboard is what enables encryption on the JumpDrive Secure II, and the Dashboard itself looks identical regardless of whether you are using Windows XP or OS X. 

The JumpDrive Secure II comes with both Mac and Windows executables.

To launch the Dashboard, you simply run the application that is stored in the appropriate directory on the Secure II drive (\Mac for OS X and \Windows for Windows XP).  Under OS X, Lexar's software will install a driver before you can gain access to the Dashboard. 

A driver must be installed under OS X in order to use the application.

Once launched, the Dashboard is fairly straight-forward.  You can create an encrypted vault, encrypt individual files, shred files and of course, adjust the settings of the application. 

The introduction of encrypted vaults with the Secure II is a huge step forward in the usability of encryption on USB flash drives.  Normally, if you want to encrypt a flash drive, you simply partition it into a public and a secure/encrypted space, and the latter is accessible through a separate drive letter.  Some USB flash drives will let you access both the public and secure partitions simultaneously, while the majority of others will only let you access one or the other.  Lexar's JumpDrive Secure II handles encrypted partitions through the use of what they call encrypted vaults. 

An encrypted vault is nothing more than an encrypted file that is stored on the publicly accessible JumpDrive Secure II in the Vaults directory.  You can create as many vaults as you'd like, and each one gets their own drive letter and can be mounted/unmounted at any time.  To the OS, an encrypted vault looks just like a regular drive while mounted, and can be written to and treated just like a regular drive.  The only difference is that anything written to that drive is encrypted using Lexar's 256-bit AES algorithm.