Trusted Computing Group

Last week, the most viewed article on the computer industry site CTR (Computer Technology Review), "Hardware-Based Solutions Increase Encryption Security," was an one by TCG's own Robert Thibadeau. He wrote on the usage of self-encrypting drives to meet compliance regulations for data protection. That's a long way to say that hardware-based security in hard disk drives works to keep data away from unauthorized users.

In his article, Thibadeau notes, "94% of respondents of a security survey indicated that they had their data attacked in the last six months. The need for data protection goes beyond lost or stolen hardware."

So how do self-encrypting drives, which still are relatively new, solve this problem? Thibadeau continues, "... to avoid the penalties from a data breach of a missing computer, the enterprise must provide evidence (logs) that the laptop was encrypting before it was lost or stolen. Obviously, the evidence cannot be provided in cases where the encryption software has been disabled. Another problem involving encryption results from loopholes that exist in current regulations."

Hardware-based encryption resolves some of the problems inherent in software-based encryption. It's on-the-fly, transparent to users and can't be turned off. And despite claims to the contrary, it does NOT impact performance, as proven by a report from Trusted Strategies evaluating performance of these drives.

TCG created its OPAL specification several years ago and since then, a number of companies have implemented it in their drives. The TCG specifications are extensible to other storage devices, and some vendors offer enterprise storage systems with the same hardware-based security.

We have written extensively on the topic of SEDs and offer a number of resources to help developers, OEMs and IT. One might wonder who is using these drives? Recently, Mazda, the automobile maker, talked about how it protects corporate information with SEDs. Read the case study here.