Seagate ships encrypted laptop disk drives

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Two years following its announcement, Seagate is finally shipping its fully-encrypted 2.5-inch hard drive.

The disks, available in 80, 120 and 160GB capacities, are fully encrypted, using hardware-based AES encryption. The family of drives store data using perpendicular recording technology and has a 1.5Gbit/sec serial ATA interface.

The company has signed a deal with Californian laptop maker ASI Computer Technologies to put Seagate's 80GB Momentus 5400.2 hard drives in its new ASI C8015 whitebook system. Additionally, this new laptop will sport a biometric fingerprint reader for stronger user authentication from April. Prices for the laptop are expected to be around £1,100.

A recent Ponemon Institute study found that 35 per cent of all computer data breaches involved lost laptops or other digital devices. In the institute's 2005 National Encryption Survey, the chief reasons organizations cited for not encrypting sensitive or confidential information were concern about system performance (69 per cent), complexity (44 per cent) and cost (25 per cent).

Kent Tibbils senior Platform Technologies and Marketing director at ASI said security was a growing concern for users and companies with a mobile workforce using laptops to store sensitive information.

"The theft of intellectual property, customer information and other precious content stored on laptops can cost organisations dearly in legal remedies and customer retention, to say nothing of the considerable cost of restoring one's good name," said Tibbils.

As reported on IT PRO, Nationwide Building Society was fined nearly £1m following a stolen laptop containing details of account customers.

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