Self-encrypting hard drives
September 28th, 2011 by David Bradley >> 2 Comments
Every consumer, government civil servant, doctor, business executive, journalist, scientist needs a self-encrypting drive for their data, surely? They provide a high level of security by encrypting all data on the disk automatically without user intervention and without compromising computer performance. The encryption cannot be bypassed, so why aren’t we all using them and avoiding data theft across the public and private sector?
Related articles
- Encrypted Drive Adoption to Address the Costs and Dangers of Insecure Storage Devices (forbes.com)
- Mac Basics: How to encrypt an external hard drive in Lion (macworld.com)
- Micron RealSSD C400 SED is the self-encrypting SSD you’ve been waiting for (geek.com)
- Sync encrypted files with Dropbox and SecretSync (sciencetext.com)
- Bitlocker, a Guide for the Uninitiated (ghacks.net)
- Almost All Future Drives Will Self Encrypt, Says Tom Coughlin, in Industry’s First Forecast on SEDs – TCG (trustedcomputinggroup.org)
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Robert // Sep 28, 2011 at 5:31 pm
For businesses, I think the article is correct is the cost of why they don’t take up SED’s. I’d buy one myself, but they are 2.5 – 4 times the cost of a similar sized non-SED.
Personally, I use TrueCrypt containers for files I really need secure, and since these are portable I can use them on any platform that TrueCrypt supports.
Once SED’s get to 1.5x the cost I’ll likely go for one.
David Bradley // Sep 29, 2011 at 8:49 am
OK. For personal use you’d have to be a rich early adopter, for sure. I currently use something similar to the system you mention. But, for governments and any agencies or organisations handling massive databases of our private and personal information, it is beyond the pale that they are not. We hear almost on a weekly basis of some USB thumb drive, laptop or CD-ROM being “left on a train”, stolen or abandoned in a pub by some government official and the data lifted because it was not encrypted. Which for those who don’t know, does not simply meaning having a login or even boot password for your PC. Password-protecting an operating system does not equate to encrypting the data on the drive. It is trivial to access data on such an unencrypted drive without the password.