It's a good job that the content of books is commonly superior to their covers. JDFSoft's Portable Vault arrives in a double-sized DVD case with nothing in it bar the program disc. The inlay is a sickly orange and, in short, if you were judging a product by its packaging, this one wouldn't leave the shelf.

As it stands though, the program itself is commendably strong. It's a specific utility for a specific purpose, which will resonate with anyone who has ever lost a flash drive in the past. When loaded onto portable storage - be it a flash drive or portable hard drive - Portable Vault creates a secure file area to drag and drop your work into.

Then, should the worst happen and your storage medium of choice go missing, you at least have the peace of mind that the content of your drive isn't going to be compromised. What's more, there's little evidence of the data itself to be seen, thanks to the way the program squirrels it away. True, there's an executable file for Portable Vault, but the data itself stays hidden and - to the naked eye - non-existent until you enter the correct, case-sensitive password.

Getting the program up and running is easy. First you install the software onto a computer, ensuring your portable storage is attached. Once installed, you set up your vault, giving it a name and a password. There's no warning if you choose a blatantly obvious password, though, and there is a password hint system should you go the other way and pick something you simply can't remember. Should the worst happen and your password still remain a mystery, then unless you happen to be a hacker of some repute you're going to struggle to break the 256-bit security protection.

Portable Vault is a modest and slim program that doesn't even cover 4MB of the installation CD, but it is an effective one. It's realistic and truthful in what it claims it can do, and we were perfectly satisfied that it was protecting our data and that only the very, very determined saw a cat in Hell's chance of seeing it without the right password.

As a piece of software, there's not a bell or whistle in sight, though, and that's reflected in the sparse presentation throughout. But it does work, it does protect your data, and that's the extent of what it promises to do.

This is a sparse but very effective utility that does one specific job without any fuss or frills whatsoever.