Fingerprint Security Briefcase keeps papers safe

Published 22 June 2010

Biometrically protected briefcase may be nice to have, but since most business people now carry sensitive information digitally, one observer thinks that a more practical solution a giant USB key

Crack open the average Wall Streeter’s Italian designed briefcase these days and you are more likely to find a sack lunch, a paperback, and bottle of Jack than sensitive documents. Today, the once venerable briefcase — a supple, leather-bound safe containing all your most sensitive documents — goes extinct by the moment, as sheathes of business papers become encrypted USB keys.

John Brownlee writes that it is a sad thing. Briefcases are so beautiful. More relevantly, they make you look so important and businessy. Everything is going digital, though: if there was only a way to make the briefcase digital too.

Chinavision thinks they have figured out a way to do just that. Their new Fingerprint Security Briefcase has a built-in fingerprint reader keeping your stuff safe, with a locking mechanism that stores up to twelve different users and two administrators, as well as the ability to store two fingerprints per user.

Brownlee notes that the problem here is that Chianvision’s briefcase, while nice looking, does not change the fact that the stuff you store in briefcases has all gone digital, leaving even the most biometrically secure case pretty much empty. “Frankly, a briefcase that was really just a giant USB key that you could keep stuff in would probably be a better solution for most people,” he writes.