opal
July 26th, 2010 at 04:26pm
Under Storage
A recent article by Thomas Coughlin for the Gerson Lehrman Group discussed a few reasons why the Trusted Computing Group’s Opal specification for self-encrypting drives is also applicable to solid state (Flash) drives. Two benefits that I hadn’t realised were available are 1) the cryptographic secure erasure feature of Opal, zapping the decryption keys in [...]
Continue Reading Further benefits of Opal on Solid State Drives
Tags: gerson lehrman group, opal, thomas coughlin
By Ken Y-N
June 28th, 2010 at 03:09pm
Under Storage
A recent post on Computer Technology Review by Robert Thibadeau, Ph.D. from Wave Systems on behalf of the Trusted Computing Group listed a number of reasons why one should encrypt notebook computers, and why a hardware solution such as the Opal specification from the Trusted Computing Group is the best. It reports a study: One [...]
Continue Reading Why you want hardware-based disk encryption
Tags: computer technology review, opal, wave
By Ken Y-N
June 7th, 2010 at 02:19pm
Under Storage
BusinessWire recently published a press release from Hitachi on their new ultra-slim drives, a mere 7mm thick with a 2.5 inch platter, up to 320 GB capacity, and Trusted Computing Group’s Opal self-encrypting drive standard ready. Engadget also has a picture of said drive, but the hand holding it seems to be male in shape [...]
Continue Reading Hitachi’s super-slim self-encrypting drive
Tags: hitachi, opal
By Ken Y-N
May 21st, 2010 at 04:08pm
Under Storage
The official Trusted Computing Group blog has an article regarding protecting your data with TCG Opal spec-compliance self-encrypting drives, an important practice given the cost of data loss. The case study covered in the article was Mazda, who found that a hardware-based solution had less of a performance overhead than their previous software-based solution, and [...]
Continue Reading Self-encrypting drives invaluable for workplace compliance
Tags: mazda, opal
By Ken Y-N
April 26th, 2010 at 04:24pm
Under Storage
A recent press release from Origin Storage announced the release of their Enigma SED (Self-Encrypting Drive), which is based around an Opal-compliant 2.5" hard drive from Toshiba with some added-value on top that doesn’t seem to be described too clearly. I think it is that they also provide cloning software to allow existing drives to [...]
Continue Reading Enigma Self-Encrypting Drive announced
Tags: enigma, opal, origin storage
By Ken Y-N
April 2nd, 2010 at 03:00pm
Under Storage
Browsing through Wikipedia, I came across some rather bizarre text on Hardware-based full disk encryption. A paragraph reads: Currently there is an effort by Microsoft, that has a software FDE product called Bitlocker to block TCG commands through their Windows Operating System. This effort is in the IEEE 1667 group that was founded by Microsoft [...]
Continue Reading IEEE 1667 versus TCG’s Opal
Tags: ieee 1667, opal, wikipedia
By Ken Y-N
March 2nd, 2010 at 05:28pm
Under Storage
The official TCG blog recently published an extensive list of many of the available self-encrypting drives that follow the TCG’s Opal standard. As I’ve said a number of times before, self-encrypting drives is a no-brainer option, so with a list of four drive manufacturers and four vendors of management software there’s lots to choose from.
Continue Reading Looking for a self-encrypting drive?
Tags: opal
By Ken Y-N
September 1st, 2009 at 03:33am
Under Storage
Hitachi recently published a press release describing their new Ultra Fast Half Terabyte Mobile Hard Disk Drive. The specs for the Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 are 7200 RPM, 2.5-inch, 3Gb/s SATA interface, 0.69 watts power consumption at rest and 1.8 watts on read/write, 56% larger and 16% faster than its predecessor, and with hardware-based full disk [...]
Continue Reading Hitachi’s new 500 Gb mobile hard disk with Opal protection
Tags: hitachi, opal, travelstar 7k500
By Ken Y-N