CES 2008: Seagate expands secure disk range

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Storage manufacturer Seagate is targeting small and mid-sized businesses worried about data security with a new range of encrypted, external hard drives.

The drives, known as Maxtor Black Armor, make use of the same full-disk encryption [FDE] technology Seagate is already supplying to laptop manufacturers including Dell and Fujitsu. However, the new drive - available initially in a slim line USB casing with a capacity of 160GB - is being aimed at a wider range of applications, including data back up and transport.

The Seagate FDE drives, including Black Armor, use custom-developed encryption software for encryption. To secure the drive, all the user has to do is set up a password.

Once this is done, all data flowing to the drive from the interface is automatically encrypted on the fly. For added security, there is no second-level or recovery password, and Seagate says it will not create a "back door" key for the drives, even for law enforcement agencies or governments. Users who lose their passwords will not be able to recover their data.

According to Brian Dexheimer, chief marketing officer of Seagate, the drives are likely to be used by small and mid-sized businesses rather than consumers. Dexheimer also expects enterprises to buy the drives, especially where they need to send sensitive data between locations.

The Black Armor drive uses AES encryption, certified by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Seagate has also been working with the US National Security Agency on certification for the hardware. Dexheimer expects government departments to be among the early adopters of the drives.

"This [our security technology] has been deployed in notebooks before, but it is the first time it has been deployed in an external drive. It will be pretty attractive as a backup or portable storage device," he said.

Despite the growth of electronic data networks, Dexheimer said, there is still a need for businesses to store and move large amounts of data on physical media. Greater use of encrypted external storage, he added, would eliminate many of the risks of data loss, such as last year's loss

of Child Benefit records in the UK.

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a US consumer group, calculates that more than 215 million computer records have been compromised on lost or stolen computers, disks or external storage devices since 2005.

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