Hard drive: Seagate ships strongest security self-encrypting storage

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 13 March 2007 18:48

Your IT - Entertainment

Why stuff around with encryption software, when the latest hard drives will come with encryption hardware built-in directly? Seagate says they have the answer.

While software encryption of hard drives has been available for some time, with Microsoft offering their ‘BitLocker’ technology in selected versions of Vista, Seagate has announced they have shipped a 2.5-inch hard drive with FDE, or ‘full disc encryption’, the strongest encrypting hard drive “with a comprehensive suite of powerful security capabilities”.

The first notebook manufacturer to offer the hard drives to their customers is ASI Computer Technologies, and will come with Wave Systems Corp. security management software which Seagate and Wave Systems say are designed to ‘simplify enterprise deployments’.

The drive itself is called the “Momentus 5400 FDE.2” and uses the now common ‘perpendicular recording technology’ to squeeze 160Gb onto a drive that once had a maximum capacity of 100Gb without perpendicularity. I’m not sure if that’s quite how Seagate would describe drives that aren’t perpendicularized, but I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. 

The drive also offers a fast Serial ATA interface, 5400rpm speeds and hardware-based AES encryption, which Seagate reminds us is “a government-grade security protocol used to encrypt all hard drive information transparently and automatically, preventing unauthorized access to data on lost or stolen laptops”.

Seagate says that this new technology is important thanks to all of the sensitive information now regularly stored on notebook PCs, with losses or theft costing millions of dollars in lost trade secrets and intellectual property – and they note that, despite this, many laptops “remain unprotected”.

Seagate quote a recent Ponemon Institute study which found that “35% of all computer data breaches involved lost laptops or other digital devices. In the institute’s 2005 National Encryption Survey, the chief reasons organizations cited for not encrypting sensitive or confidential information were concern about system performance (69%), complexity (44%) and cost (25%)”.

Seagate say that built-in hardware-based full disc encryption (FDE) “delivers significantly stronger protection against hacking and tampering than traditional encryption approaches by securely performing all cryptographic operations and key management within the drive”.

Seagate also says that the encrypting hard drive gives organizations an easy way to  “repurpose or retire laptops without compromising sensitive information” and “to comply with the growing number of data privacy laws calling for the protection of consumer information using government-grade encryption”.

ASI Computer Technologies is offering the Momentus 5400 FDE.2 in their new “ASI C8015 whitebook system”. This notebook is set to ship in April, and will also feature a now standard biometric fingerprint reader for stronger user authentication. The initial customers for the ASI are expected to be in the healthcare, legal, finance, government and other industries “requiring strong protection of information stored on laptop PCs”.

So what about the 'Wave Systems security suite'? How does that work? Read onto page 2 to find out, and also to learn about Seagate's new 7200rpm 2.5-inch hard drive with 'free-fall protection' which Seagate says is a 'world first'. Please read onto page 2 for the conclusion!