Seagate to offer Full Disk Encryption for Data Centers

Technology from Seagate and industry leaders including IBM and LSI addresses the need to instantly, automatically secure data the moment it has left the data center, while simultaneously addressing the hurdles in adding encryption in the data center.

Seagate Technology today announced it is collaborating with others in the storage and security industry to extend its hardware-based, Full Disk Encryption (FDE) technology to its entire portfolio of enterprise-class hard drives.

Providing data center managers with the best possible protection for data-at-rest is a significant advancement for security of the world's enterprise data centers.  

The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is establishing a security protocol for communicating with these self-encrypting hard drives, and the IEEE 1619.3 is creating a key management standard to ensure that this new technology will have interoperability.

Among the major storage industry players actively involved are IBM, LSI, and Seagate.

Seagate this week is also demonstrating the performance and security capabilities of enterprise drive-level FDE at Storage Networking World.

The demonstrations underscore the value that FDE technology brings to storage system administrators tasked with protecting against breaches of data that can occur in drives and systems that have been repurposed, decommissioned, disposed of, sent for repair, misplaced or stolen.

"Many organizations are considering drive-level security for its simplicity in securing sensitive data through the hardware lifecycle from initial setup, to upgrade transitions and disposal," said Eric Ouellet, vice president, Secure Business Enablement, Gartner.

"Drive disposal in particular has always been one of the most challenging elements of the data security lifecycle. Even with secure disposal processes in place, misplacement, mislabeling and theft still do occur which can result in significant losses, penalties and fines. Eliminating the risk of compromise from the source is one approach that can significantly reduce the complexity of managing sensitive data."