Apricorn Aegis Fortress L3 portable storage drive: Tougher, faster, and more secure

If you're looking for a fast, ultra-rugged, secure encrypted portable storage drive that's available in both HDD and SSD flavors, look no further than Apricorn's new Aegis Fortress L3.

How does this portable drive differ from other Apricorn drives? Well, for starters it features Apricorn's latest encryption chipset that gives the models using SSD write speeds up to 150 percent faster and read speeds up to 180 percent faster than previous versions.

The Aegis Fortress L3 has FIPS 140-2 Level-3 validation in the pipeline (pending Q1 2019), which is the highest level that NIST assigns to portable encrypted devices, and covers not only the encryption itself, but even physical access and tampering of the electronics, drive and enclosure.

Apricorn Aegis Fortress L3 portable storage drive

The Aegis Fortress L3 is also built to last, with the enclosure milled from a solid block of aircraft-grade 6061 aluminum alloy held together with snap-off unidirectional security fasteners secured in place with epoxy to detect any attempts at tampering. The membrane-style keypad is rated to IP66 (pending) against water, dust and grit penetration, which means it can endure a lot of hardship.

Also: The coolest USB flash drive you can buy: Apricorn Aegis Secure Key 3z

The Apricorn Aegis Fortress L3 has a spectacularly impressive features list:

• 256-Bit AES XTS Military-Grade Hardware Encryption: Encrypts all data on the fly
• Software-Free: Ready to use right out of the box, with no software to install, no drivers, no updates
• OS Agnostic: Compatible with PC, MAC, Linux, Android, Symbian or any mass storage compliant system with a powered USB port (USB 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 compatible)
• Forced Enrollment: No factory-preset default PINs
• Aegis Configurator compatible: Create custom profiles and mass configure multiple Aegis devices at once
• Onboard Keypad: All PIN entries are performed on the device's keypad making it compatible with systems without keyboards and shares no critical security parameters with its host computer.
• Locked-Down Firmware: This makes it immune to malware such as "BadUSB."
• Lock-Override Mode: Can be programmed to remain unlocked during reboot / USB re-enumeration
• Two Read-Only Modes: Preserve data in its original, unaltered state while blocking malware
• Data Recovery PINs that provide access to the device in the event of forgotten PINs
• Programmable Brute Force Protection: After a predetermined number of consecutive incorrect PIN entry attempts, the Aegis Fortress L3 will conclude that it is under Brute Force and destroy its encryption key and PINs rendering the data useless
• Future-Proof: Comes with interchangeable Type-A and Type-C connector cables
• Increased Storage Capacities: 500GB - 5TB in HDD models; 512GB - 16TB in SSD models

"Data protection concerns will continue to rise globally in light of GDPR and the upcoming California Consumer Privacy Act in 2020 as will the growing need to securely store and move large amounts of sensitive data offline, avoiding potential targeting in the cloud and software encryption vulnerabilities," said Mike McCandless, vice president of sales and marketing at Apricorn. "Our new Aegis Fortress L3 gives regulated industries the highest level of security validation for small form-factor storage systems and ensures compliance with Article 32 of GDPR."

Also: Apricorn Aegis Secure Key 3NX: The best flash drive for business users

Prices start at $239 for the 500GB HDD variety, going all the way up to $9,999 for the 16TB SSD version, with drives being available for immediate purchase.

Apricorn Aegis Secure Key 3NX

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