Bob Shallit: Auburn-based ioSafe keeps hard drives from cooking

It's BBQ season and Robb Moore's been busy firing up his grill.

But the CEO of Auburn-based ioSafe Inc. hasn't been making burgers, ribs or thighs. He's been cookin' up hard drives.

In visits last week to New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Sacramento, Moore demonstrated his company's newest product: a computer hard drive encased in a fire-resistant sleeve. It's designed to protect computer data from damage caused by fire, as well as floods and other calamities – sort of like an airplane's black box.

The product's secret sauce? A built-in fan to keep the drive cool during normal use and gaskets that quickly swell shut, protecting the drive when extreme heat is detected.

"We're expecting sales of $5 million to $10 million this year," says Moore, an engineer who came up with the product idea after searching – unsuccessfully – for a fireproof way to protect digital family photographs stored on his home PC.

The 3-year-old company's first products were designed to protect the entire computer and sold for $7,000 to $15,000 each. The new, smaller version – called the 3.5 series – protects only the hard drive, Moore says. It's priced at $330 to $460 and sold through the company's Web site – www.iosafe.com – and by online resellers such as PC Mall and CompUSA.

For the East Coast demos, Moore and associate John Wernke used a propane-fired grill to "cook" the drive at 1,400 degrees for five minutes. The superheated box was then removed and connected to a laptop. It worked perfectly, according to published reviews.

In Sacramento, however, the test proved problematic. The cooked drive was removed from the grill, cooled, hooked up to the computer and … nothing.

Apologetic, Moore muttered: "This is the risk when you do live demos."

Fortunately, after the hard drive cooled down a bit more and the computer was rebooted, it worked fine.

The blazing ioSafe demo is a sight to behold. Just don't try it at home.

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Just their type: Speaking of data protection, employees at one local bank are reporting great results with a new "hands-on" method of keeping computer hackers at bay.

To sign onto their computers from remote locations, employees at Bank of Sacramento must correctly type in their ID and password – and do so with the same typing rhythm and speed they've used in the past.

If they don't, the security system – installed by AdmitOne Security of Issaquah, Wash. – locks them out until they can answer several questions proving their identity.

"It's really very cool," says Margaret Harkness, chief information officer of the 10-year-old bank, AdmitOne's first Sacramento-area customer.

Harkness says Bank of Sacramento adopted the "keystroke dynamics" system last year to help meet federal standards on protecting confidential financial records.

How reliable is it? Darn near foolproof, she says.

"When we were first testing it," Harkness says, "we all tried to break in" by attempting to sign on as another person. "We never could."

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Logo's a go: Electronics retailer Best Buy gets to keep its trademark "wedge" in Woodland, after all.

As we reported earlier, the city's planning commission had voted to deny Best Buy's plans to use its customary tilting blue wedge for a store in the 55-acre Woodland Gateway retail center.

That decision was overturned this week by the Woodland City Council in a unanimous 5-0 vote.

Council members determined the wedge was smaller than expected, says city clerk Sue Vannucci.

Several members of the planning commission showed up to defend their vote against the wedge, Vannucci says.

Some staffers spoke in support of Best Buy's plans, saying the city needed the store's revenues. Also speaking was a Best Buy spokesman.

Did the company ever threaten to pull out of Gateway if it didn't get its wedgie?

Not exactly. "They just said they weren't willing to change the design," Vannucci says.

About the writer:

• Reach Bob Shallit at (916) 321-1049. Back columns: www.sacbee.com/shallit.