I'm facing a situation where my workplace requires that all USB drives be protected with BitLocker encryption. However, I need to extract data from an instrument that doesn't support encrypted USB drives. Is there any way to unlock an encrypted USB on my computer, then remove it and keep it in an unlocked state? Alternatively, is there a way to decrypt it so it can be used with the instrument?
5 Answers
Switching back and forth between encrypted and non-encrypted drives is not a viable solution; it defeats the purpose of the security measures. A better workaround could be to copy your files to another USB, then securely wipe it after use.
Maybe ask your company to provide a self-encrypting drive with a keypad. That way, you wouldn't have to worry about decrypting and encrypting with each use.
Have you considered using two separate USB drives? You could have one drive for transferring data between your computer and the instrument, while keeping another one that has BitLocker encryption. It might be a hassle, but it could simplify your workflow.
If you're comfortable with Linux, there's a neat trick where you can use a Linux laptop to unlock the encrypted drive. You can set it up to loop mount the encrypted partition and present it as unencrypted to your instrument.
The only way to keep a USB 'unlocked' once you take it out of your computer is to decrypt it entirely. This means you'd be removing the BitLocker protection, and unfortunately, you'd lose any encrypted data on it in the process. If your work mandates that all USBs must remain encrypted, that might complicate things further.
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