Seagate is to build automatic encryption into all its enterprise hard drives, the company announced at Storage Expo 2007 in London. All enterprise drives will be fitted with Seagate's Full Disk Encryption (FDE) as standard.
The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is designing a security protocol for the drives, and the IEEE 1619.3 Key Management Subcommittee is setting up a management standard to ensure interoperability. Seagate's move is in response to growing UK government pressure for better data security practices in the industry. Making drive encryption automatic has already been recommended by the US National Security Agency (NSA).
View: the full story
News source: vnunet
The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is designing a security protocol for the drives, and the IEEE 1619.3 Key Management Subcommittee is setting up a management standard to ensure interoperability. Seagate's move is in response to growing UK government pressure for better data security practices in the industry. Making drive encryption automatic has already been recommended by the US National Security Agency (NSA).
















Yeah, which of course sucks way more than potential free access by anyone.
Yeah, which of course sucks way more than potential free access by anyone.
... because it's OK that the government spies on us, just don't interfere with our pr0n storage and TV...
It's hack-able for some people and it's a real pain-a55 when you need to recover a disk.
If only they had Drives like these. Businesses that deal with peoples information should be required by law to use strong encryption.
If only they had Drives like these. Businesses that deal with peoples information should be required by law to use strong encryption.
But would the drive require a password/key if it were to remain plugged into the same laptop? I guess they should be able to get the data out as long as they use the same computer.
If only they had Drives like these. Businesses that deal with peoples information should be required by law to use strong encryption.
... if only businesses were required by law to use software encryption for personaly data, since that technology has only been around for 20 years or so...
If the key ever hits memory, then it will be decrypted extremely quick
O well, guess it's better than nowt
That and once this is in place in the hardware it could be used for content rights "enforcement" and reporting.
Assuming that the hardware encryption is reasonably strong, its main weakness is PEBKAC (link) (Problem Between the Keyboard And the Chair). Social engineering and poor security of the encryption password are the biggest vulnerabilities.
While not perfect, hardware HD encryption is a step in the right direction. I'm tired of careless/lazy corporate and government employees losing bazillions of people's personal data on portable machines. I've gotten at least two notifications in the past few years that my data was on stolen or lost drives. Sadly, it seems like only a law would motivate companies to be really diligent about protecting customer data.
Besides, the drive can't make the user secure.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.