Because I don't have the latest and lightest laptop, I need to have a way to bring my information from home to work and back again. When the portable flash drive came out, I was thrilled. Finally, something that could be portable and easy to use, so long as I could find a USB connection – and everything had a USB connection.



At first, I only put a little information on my flash drive, and then I realized just how much information I could fit – credit card numbers, user names, passwords, my social security number, work files, budget reports, my personal financial information, etc. I could fit my entire life on that little flash drive and just put it in my pocket whenever I needed to take it somewhere – it was a brilliant invention for keeping all of my information in one place. And it still is.

However, it took just one mistake for me to realize that maybe I needed to do more than put my flash drive in my pocket. I had my drive on my keychain for a while when I was walking to my car one day and realized that it wasn't there. I panicked. I thought of all the information that was on that drive and what I would need to do to replace it. Unfortunately, I didn't make another backup of that information, so I would have been in deep trouble.

Thankfully, I was able to find the drive just a few yards away, but it got me to thinking – was I going to have to go back to lugging around a laptop or could I find another way to protect my drive? I looked all over the Internet for possible programs that could encrypt my data on my drive and found Portable Vault. It was the answer to my prayers.

Not only could I keep all of my information in one place, but it would be guarded by a high quality encryption program that few people could ever break. No more worrying for me!