Encrypted Hard Drives

I have documented in this space numerous times how the government and private industry have been screwing their employees and taxpayers by losing sensitive data to theft and downright negligence. You can click here to see the previous stories.

But now Seagate has come out with a new hard drive that is automatically encrypted. This will be a huge boon for the privacy and protection of data, and will help serve as an insurance policy against theft or negligence.

From NewsFactor here:

Seagate Debuts New Hard Drives with Built-In Encryption

Seagate Technology will soon begin shipping its first hard drives with special encryption chips that will make it impossible to read data off the disk — or even boot up a PC — without some form of authentication.

The new Momentus 5400 FDE.2 (Full Disk Encryption 2), geared to notebook computers, will come in several capacities, including 80 GB, 120 GB, and 160 GB. Seagate said it expects to ship the drives early next year.

The world’s first laptop hard disk with built-in encryption could help reduce the impact of losing a laptop loaded with sensitive files. Protecting data at the hard drive level — rather than just at the level of the operating system — will offer another layer of defense against thieves.

Now the Government should fast track the accreditation process on this new drive and require it in all future laptops. And for all of those companies that do audits- you should get them too and stop embarrassing yourselves when you lose the data from the company you are auditing.