bws48, I thought I'd throw my 2 bit's in. The average joe using typical brute force software can crack many encryptions using L0pht Crack software and others. With that in mine, what you can do is use a program like Masker 7.0 ( http://www.softpuls.com/masker/ ) which will encrypt and hide your data.

How it works is save all your information to a word document, get a picture of anything (you standing with your dog) or mp3 or video etc.. and you open it up with Masker and insert your word document in there and encrypt it with 256 blowfish. What this does is if someone does steal your thumb drive and you have it full of pictures or mp3's etc.. They would have to know the exact picture or mp3 or whatever to try to break it plus they would need the program as well and break the encryption. The file you save it in will work as normal,plays music or what have you and the properties shows virtually no signs of it being tampered with except a slight increase in file size.

They have a free download to try it and see if you like it, it has a lot of potential and you can put the program on the jump drive or while traveling download the trial for field extractions.

http://www.softpuls.com/masker/


Example: Where is your information? Where's it hidden in ,it could be in the ship_logo.gif or the logoff.asp or any of these files and all the files function perfectly with no signs of tampering.