RSSSeagate intros 500 GB self-encrypting laptop drives
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published November 10, 2008, 6:26 PM
Today, Seagate announced it's rolling out two new self-encrypted laptop drives, designed to guard against information theft. Dell will be an initial OEM customer.
Seagate on Monday announced new full disk encryption (FDE) Momentus self-encrypted drives with capabilities of up to a half-terabyte, along with software from McAfee for encryption management. Although standalone editions of the 5,400 RPM and 7,200 RPM drives are available to consumers and organizations of all sizes, Seagate is also selling the FDEs to OEMs, starting with Dell.
In the US alone, a laptop is stolen every 53 seconds, said Joni Clark, product marketing manager for Seagate's Personal Computer Business Unit, in a briefing for BetaNews. About 97 percent of these laptops are never recovered, Clark added, citing FBI statistics.
As of January of 2005, more than 245 million records had been breached on laptops, with 50% of these breaches occurring in Fortune 1000 corporations, 25% in the military, 16% in higher education, and 9% in the medical field, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
To protect military and other government documents, Seagate's third-generation self-encrypted drives comply with NSA security guidelines. The two drives have also achieved FIPS 197 algorithm certification, with FIPS 140-2 certification now in progress. The drives use AES 128-bit encryption.
But small businesses and consumers, too, are increasingly worried over data theft, said Clark. Papagino's Pizza, for example, will use Dell Latitude laptops containing Seagate's self-encrypting drives.
Numbers from the Ponemon Institute show that 80% of businesses experienced some sort of data breach in 2007.
Accordingly, Seagate is offering two modes for the drives. Many businesses and other organizations will use bundled McAfee software for hard disk drive detection, encryption policy management, authentication, and security auditing.
Consequently, they'll be able to prove compliance with laws in 44 states requiring encryption of customer information, Clark maintained.
Consumers, on the other hand, will typically run the Momentus hard drives without the McAfee software, to save on performance overhead. Once the self-encrypted hard drive is installed, the user will simply enter a BIOS password and then log on as usual.
The 320 GB versions of the Momentus encrypted hard drives are shipping already, while the 500 GB editions are slated for availability next year.
Truecrypt?
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|What is the performance panelty thet you pay for using this thing?
my comments at http://www.commentino.com/orim
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|What's the value of your data - or more to the point, the compromise of said data?
And reading other source, as the encryption is done in real time by a hardware chip, the overhead in very minimal - some stating that there is effectively none.
One suspects that Windows will impose a higher latency penalty than the onboard encryption.
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|if you need it this is cool thing
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|Wow, what a waste of R&D. Just what I want, a hard drive that will slow down performance and give me a false sense of security...
Wake me when they add hardware encryption. McAfee has a worthless reputation for security. They probably added a backdoor for law enforcement to bypass the encryption.
No thanks, I'll stick to open source and old-fashioned security options.
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|Paps showed a reading problem with this remark
"Wake me when they add hardware encryption. McAfee has a worthless reputation for security. They probably added a backdoor for law enforcement to bypass the encryption."
Wake me when you learn how to read with your eyes and mind open.
From the article
"Consumers, on the other hand, will typically run the Momentus hard drives without the McAfee software, to save on performance overhead. Once the self-encrypted hard drive is installed, the user will simply enter a BIOS password and then log on as usual."
To translate English into something a bit more idiot proof that means the drive does hardware encryption. Clearly whatever McAfee does is extra and not primary. The hardware encryption is AES 128 which also stated in the article. McAfee is selling a software solution with AES 256 so I suspect thats what they are bring to the table.
Do try opening that tightly shuttered mind and see reality.
Ethelred
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|"I'll stick to open source and old-fashioned security options."
Meaning: Doing nothing.
Smart.
AES is not a McAfee invention. And the NIST FIPS certifications are good ones. And the standards ARE open. http://csrc.nist.gov/cryptval/aes/aesval.html
And the encryption is performed by the addition of a hardware chip which reputedly has little overhead.
A development by various manufacturers (Hitachi, etc.) that is long overdue.
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|easy there kiddies, not everyone embraces new untested technology as quickly as others. So far all I hear is Without the software encryption, the best these drives can do is a bio password lock. If you think something like that can't be bypassed easily, then by all means rely on it.
And please, don't be so presumptuous about another's encryption technology. Doing nothing is indeed a very dangerous idea. Luckily some of us have more intelligence to use our brains.
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|I did not interpret that part of the article to mean it was strong hardware encryption. I will keep reading up on this new technology.
"To translate English into something a bit more idiot proof that means the drive does hardware encryption."
"Do try opening that tightly shuttered mind and see reality."
You need not worry about my tightly shuttered mind:) Unfortunately, I don't think you understand how to garnish respect when commenting. Try not to be so attacking next time. Free advice.
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|"You need not worry about my tightly shuttered mind:) Unfortunately, I don't think you understand how to garnish respect when commenting. Try not to be so attacking next time. Free advice."
Free advice. As useful as your original post.
Your reply was fine, with improved reasoning and signs of actually reading the article. Well except for the nonsense after the fist paragraph. Try for some style in your putdowns.
I haven't seen a lot reason to look for respect around here. Not much effort in most posts. The often dubious writing in the articles might have something to do with that. I think its mostly the ephemeral nature of the discusions cause it.
128 bit encryption is as strong enough for most use unless there is a flaw. Thats the reason for using a know method. They have been tested unlike proprietary solutions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...ced_Encryption_Standard
"The design and strength of all key lengths of the AES algorithm (i.e., 128, 192 and 256) are sufficient to protect classified information up to the SECRET level. TOP SECRET information will require use of either the 192 or 256 key lengths."
Of course a lousy password would overturn all that.
Ethelred
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|Since when McAfee is an encryption specialist? Getoutta here!
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|McAfee, isn't that funny? They owned PGP for a couple years and nearly killed it off due to poor management. I wouldn't trust McAfee with my shredded trash! Probably better off with a standard disk and Truecrypt.
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|They are talking about the epo (enterprise policy orchestrator), a small client that can pull a policy from a policy server and apply it to various applications.
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|"along with software from McAfee for encryption management"
/facepalm
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