There's a huge range of choices in USB flash drives, from tiny to big, playful to rugged. It all depends on what you're doing with them, like swapping files with friends, or saving photos while on a trip.
But if you're using your USB drive to backup and archive important personal files, much less business files, then your priorities change -- you want a drive both to be physically rugged and to secure your data from anyone who might get their hands on it.
The Imation Defender storage line of flash drives, hard drives, and optical media are designed for security, with FIPS 140-2 validation -- The Federal Information Processing Standardization (FIPS) is a U.S. government computer security standard used to accredit cryptographic components.
The Imation Defender F200 Biometric Flash Drive then features strong physical security plus data protection through AES 256-bit encryption, password authentication, and fingerprint biometrics.
The physical design is built around a metal enclosure with an enclosing cap with rubber sealing ring, so the result is tamper-evident, tamper-resistant, waterproof, and dustproof.
The data security is provided through AES 256-bit encryption implemented in hardware, activated when the drive is in use.
The Defender F200 then includes two forms of access control, with password authentication plus fingerprint authentication using a built-in biometric swipe sensor with hardware-based matching.
Especially for business use, you can manage and share the drive through administrative software, including setting up ten users and ten fingerprints, and customizing password policies. There's also enterprise software for centralized management of Defender drives.
The Imation Defender F200 Biometric Flash Drive is available with capacities from 1 to 32 GB, at prices ranging from around $99 to $349.
See my Portable Storage Gallery for details and comparisons on memory cards, USB drives, and hard disk storage.
Find the Imation Defender Biometric Flash Drive on Amazon.com