FDE, SED, FIPS and other abbreviations

Posted by Ken Y-N on March 24th, 2010 at 02:55pm

A recent article from Sean Glynn of Credant Technologies on the Global Security Mag web site on various abbreviations and technical terms relating to data security. I try to spell out most technical terms when I use them here, but I’m sure I forget sometimes, so this is a useful backgrounder.

However, I do have an issue with two definitions.

FDE – Full Disk Encryption, [...], using disk encryption software to encrypt every bit of data that goes on a disk or disk volume [...]

SED – a Self Encrypting Drive is a hard drive based on the Trusted Computing Group’s specifications [...]

I thought FDE was the preferred abbreviation for the TCG’s Opal specification for disk encryption. Google tells me that the Trusted Computing Group’s web site uses FDE about 204 times, but SED just 30 times. As far as I understand the terms, neither SED or FDE imply either a software or hardware solution.

Tags: fde, global security mag, sed

Under Storage Tags: fde, global security mag, sed