I went to a SANS (SANS.org) conference on Laptop Security and HHD Encryption just outside Washington DC last month. There were about 500 attendees…each paying about $4000 in total expenses to attend. The presenters where all DOD and F500 type companies. The NSA had one gentleman there, but he could only read from a sanitized and prepared speech…basically saying nothing useful considering the level of the audience.
The entire two-day conference was foundationally centered on TPM interoperability and FDE. WAVX was the unifying technologies (AKA…middleware) that made this all work together.
Seagate also had a contingent of engineers and management types talking about their new line encrypted HDDs. They did indicate that the FEDS where taking all current production until Q1-07. There was a lot of concern and questions because these drives are mfg in China; but our NSA presenter did indicate that they were now buying only HW encrypted HDDs…but couldn’t come out and tell the name of manufacturer directly. Now of course, the Seagate model is the only one on the market with the attributes that he described…as he smiled and looked at the Seagate representative off to the side of the room.
We are now entering an era where we can properly authenticate the user as well as the platform. One of the biggest problems I have in handing out VPN access is that I haven’t been able to guarantee the platform on the other end of the tunnel; with TPM , WAVX, and FDE…I now can.
I also met representatives from WAVX this past summer at a New England Information Security Group meeting (NEISG.org). These lectures are held every third Thursday in one of the Microsoft presentation rooms (6th floor-6:30PM) in their Waltham, MA offices. They were the featured security presentation for the evening. An archive of their presentation is located at the NEISG website.
TIA…Justin
Just the musings of an old duck hunter from NH…Justin.
AI
