Seagate To Encrypt Notebook Drives

Written by Adam Gosling

Tuesday, 31 October 2006

With alarm about the increasingly vulnerable storage of confidential data on laptop may be relieved with a major simplification in the protection mechanisms for notebook hard drives planned by Seagate. The company is calling its DriveTrust Technology a breakthrough in security and management and the drives are expected to appear in all manner of devices starting of course with laptop computers. Seagate says the new security platform combines strong, fully automated hardware-based security with a programming foundation that makes it easy to add security-based software applications. Such applications could provide organization-wide encryption key management, multi-factor user authentication and other capabilities that help lock down digital information when the drive is not in use. The technology works by putting the security right inside the hard drive making it cost effective and harder to defeat. The DriveTrust Technology is transparent within the drive, yet installation is no more complicated than for a normal drive and Seagate points out that the system encrypts the entire drive not just selected partitions or files. Importantly it also works without impacting the performance of the drive. As a minimum the user needs to create a password for user authentication. Any information on the drive can easily be erased if the drive needs to be re-deployed ot another machine or if it is to be disposed of at end-of-life. Seagate currently offers a hard disc drive family featuring DriveTrust Technology, the DB35 Series hard drives for digital video recorders (DVRs) and other digital entertainment devices. The DB35 Series hard drives are the first to enable manufacturers to lock a drive to the system, allowing service providers to deploy DVRs that protect recorded content from illicit copying and distribution if the 3.5-inch, 7200-RPM drive is removed. In the first quarter of calendar 2007, Seagate plans to introduce Momentus 5400 FDE.2 for notebook computers, the first hard drive with full disc encryption. Momentus 5400 FDE.2 provides an easy, cost-effective way to prevent unauthorized access to all notebook PC data in case the system or disc drive is lost, stolen, retired or resold. Related news items Consumer Advice For Premium Mobile Services -03/09/2007 Australian Idol Live On Next G -19/08/2007 Spinning Disks Aren't Standing Still -14/05/2007 ACCC Sets Interim Mobile Prices -18/02/2007 Critical Path's Memova Mobile 3.0 Brings Mobile Email and Content to Virtually All of Today's Consum -13/02/2007 Newer news items ASI Whitebook Gets Seagate Encrypted Drive -13/03/2007 Lenovo Recalls More Batteries -01/03/2007 Cisco Beefs Up Wireless LAN Security -18/02/2007 Exploding Laptop Video -13/11/2006 Check Point Plans Enterprise-Style Security For The Home -08/11/2006 Older news items Lenovo Joins Dell, Apple In Sony Recall -03/10/2006 LAX Firecracker Had A Sony Battery -21/09/2006 Vendors Contemplate Formal Standards For Lithium Ion -21/09/2006 Toshiba Joins Dell, Apple In Sony Recall -19/09/2006 IBM Laptop Explodes At LAX -17/09/2006 Tag This Now: