Titan sticks it to security

SAN FRANCISCO -- Military contractor Titan has filed patents and trademark applications for a mobile information security system on a stick -- a USB memory stick.

"We work in support of intelligence agencies, so there is a lot of interest in being able to carry information securely," said Vic Lindberg, vice president for secure solutions in Titan's Information Security Systems Division.

Titan officials introduced the branded product, ItinerX, at last week's RSA Conference here, where they announced that they would begin delivering the product next month.

The product's encryption modules must first be certified as compliant with Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 and other security standards, a process that Titan is undergoing now, before the federal government can buy the product, Lindberg said.

Titan officials said ItinerX includes a fully integrated set of information security features that include multifactor access control, encrypted file exchange, automatic data synchronization, security policy enforcement, automatic antivirus and antispyware updates, digital signatures and audit logging.

The self-contained mobile system runs on Microsoft's Windows 2000 and XP operating systems. "We're thinking about going to a Linux operating system, which would give us the ability to boot from the stick," Lindberg said.