Kingston's new USB flash drive features on-board encryption and password protection that causes the device to wipe itself after 25 failed attempts. The DataTraveler Elite (DTE) Privacy Edition is like the company's previous USB flash drives, but has on-the-fly 128-bit AES encryption. In addition, users can set a password, which if guess incorrectly will basically nuke the data portion of the drive.

The DataTraveler Elite Privacy Edition will come in various capacities from 256 MB all the way up to 4 GB. Kingston says the drive can read data at up to 24 MB per second, while writes happen at up to 14 MB per second.

With it's encryption and password protection features, Kingston is marketing the DTE Privacy Edition towards enterprises whose employees are carrying critical company information. Multi-gigabyte flash drives can be a security nightmare when lost because they usually contain internal sales reports, forecasts and employee contact information.

"Even one renegade (or lazy) employee presents a compliance risk," says the Kingston press release. The solution is to take the responsibility away from the employee. Kingston says, "The DTE Privacy Edition removes the onus on employees to take steps to secure data."

The DataTraveler Elite Privacy Edition is curretly selling and prices range from $48 for the smallest version to $347 for the four gigabyte model.