The front of the Ironkey Personal 4GB is emblazoned with the legend "The world's most secure flash drive." And how, pray tell, does it manage this feat? Well, it's not because the drive unit is wrapped in barbed wire which has been dipped in poison. And it doesn't come with a small explosive device attached to the bottom that goes off if the wrong fingerprints touch the outer casing. However, it does actually have a sort of self-destruct mechanism, believe it or not.

The first thing the new owner does with their shiny metallic-bodied Ironkey (it looks a little like a posh cigarette lighter) is plug it into their USB port. Windows then detects and installs the driver, before popping up an initialisation screen which asks for a password to be assigned to the drive. This needs to be entered every time the Ironkey is plugged in, otherwise it won't give up its data.

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You also create an online Ironkey account that stores critical information such as this password, just in case you forget it. Because if the password is wrongly entered 10 times in a row, the device destroys any data on it with a secure overwriting process. Effectively, it self-destructs.

This 10-attempt count is maintained in hardware, specifically the chip that provides the Ironkey's encryption routines (the "cryptochip"), meaning that hackers shouldn't be able to get around it. And even if they try to break the device open, apparently it can also detect physical tampering which will initiate the data destruction process.

Busting it open isn't likely to happen anyway, given that it's a tough (and waterproof) shell, which is indeed partially constructed of iron as the name suggests. The cryptochip provides military grade encryption for your data, and it's safe to say that on the whole, the level of protection this flash drive boasts is extremely impressive.

The Ironkey Personal also comes with built-in applications: you can run Firefox off the drive and securely browse the Internet, and there's an identity manager which can store all your passwords safely. Along with this, a backup service is offered that duplicates the drive's data on your PC (in encrypted form, of course). Then if you lose your Ironkey, the data can be re-copied onto a replacement.

All in all, there's no questioning the drive's level of security, and it doesn't sacrifice performance to achieve it, either. We ran a few file transfer tests and clocked very reasonable average write speeds of around 14MB/s and read speeds of 25MB/s.

The Ironkey flash drive really does live up to its bold claims, with top notch security features and a durable build quality. It doesn't compromise on the performance front, either. The price isn't cheap, but it's not unreasonable for this level of quality. Those on a more limited budget could look at the 1GB model, which weighs in at a more wallet-friendly price.