Wave Systems Corp. (fka WAVXQ)

[Fullmoon]

Full disk encryption comes to SSDs
for mobile devices, laptops

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9131684&intsrc=news_ts_head

Dell adds encrypted drives to its Latitude line of laptops
Lucas Mearian
April 16, 2009 (Computerworld) Samsung Electronics Co. announced today it is shipping its first self-encrypting solid-state disk (SSD) drives. The drives will come in 1.8-in. and 2.5-in. sizes for handheld devices and laptops, respectively.

In tandem with Samsung's announcement, Dell promptly introduced a suite of mobile data security technologies for its Latitude line of laptops, with native drive encryption expected to be available in the next few months.

"The drive, which is designed to deliver some of the fastest encrypted storage available, offers customers 8.5 times the shock tolerance versus standard notebook hard drives," Dell said in a statement.

Full disk encryption (FDE) is already a standard feature on some desktop and laptop hard disk drives, including Seagate's Momentus 5400 FDE.2 laptop drive. Samsung claims its SSD is the first to come with FDE.

While Samsung is not the first to offer hardware-based SSD encryption -- pureSilicon Inc. released its Renegade Series SSDs with hardware-based encryption in January -- Samsung is the first to offer the feature to the consumer market, according to Gene Ruth, a senior analyst with the Burton Group.

"For the laptop market, full disk encryption is a very important feature for security," Ruth said. "People are most likely to use these drives in a business environment and there it's a good and necessary thing. Also, for SSDs to be comparable to hard disk drives, encryption becomes another check mark."

Samsung's news drives, which come in 256GB, 128GB and 64GB capacities, use AES encryption along with management software from Wave Systems Corp. Samsung was unable to provide model numbers for the drives, but did say the FDE feature will be available on its latest SSDs.

Dell said the Samsung drives add to the company's encryption technologies, which can be managed remotely with the Wave Embassy Server.

"Samsung has combined the tremendous performance advantages of solid-state technology with integrated hardware encryption for drives designed especially for today's 'road warrior' professionals," Samsung's vice president of memory systems, Jim Elliott said in a statement. "Business users now get the best of performance and security in a single drive."

Samsung said its SSD performance is not affected by FDE, a drawback sometimes seen with hard drives.

The benefits of hardware encryption over today's software-only encryption approaches include faster performance, better security and an "always on" feature. "Because encryption keys and access credentials are generated and stored within the drive hardware, they never leave its confines and are never held in the operating system or by application software," Samsung said.

Jim McGregor, chief strategist at research firm In-Stat, said Samsung's announcement is yet another part of the software equation that could boost SSD adoption over time. "Everyone mentions security as a growing concern, [but] only enterprise customers typically pay close attention to it," he said. "In enterprise applications, it is increasingly important to be able to provide security for data in a market were computers are increasingly mobile and subject to theft."

Samsung said its 1.8-in. self-encrypting drive is the world's first encrypted storage drive of that size.

"Samsung is breaking new ground in performance and security with its solid-state FDE drives," said Wave CEO Steven Sprague. "With self-encrypting drives, users have the peace of mind that whatever's on the drive -- credit card numbers, medical records, sensitive personal data or intellectual property -- is always protected."

Each Samsung self-encrypting SSD, when ordered in a new computer, comes bundled with Wave's EMBASSY Trusted Drive Manager for life-cycle management of the drive, including pre-boot authentication to the drive and enrolling drive administrators and users. Trusted Drive Manager also enables the backup of drive credentials.

Wave's EMBASSY Remote Administration Server can also be purchased separately and will allow IT administrators to remotely turn on each SSD in seconds and provides detailed event logs for compliance to prove that the security settings were in place when a loss or theft occurs, Sprague said.

Dell also announced several other security features for its Latitude line:


Dell ControlPoint Security Manager, which is for remote access to mobile security features and data management. Dell ControlPoint gathers hardware and security settings within a single user interface, ending the need to search through multiple control panels.
Dell ControlVault, which is available on Dell Latitude E4200, E4300, E6500 and E64000 laptops offering hardware-based security for storing and processing user passwords, biometric templates and security codes.
Integrated RSA SecurID, which is a two-factor authentication method provided by EMC's RSA security division.
User Authentication, which in addition to RSA SecurID or fingerprint authentication, is an embedded multi-technology contactless smart card reader that enables organizations to implement multi-factor user authentication to verify user ID with HID Global iCLASS technology. This allows users to carry a single card that can be used for both logical and physical access control.

"With the new drives and Dell's broader security portfolio, customers can feel comfortable that their data will be secured not only from prying individuals, but also from destruction caused by the daily rigors of mobile computing," said Brian Beard, Samsung's SSD marketing manager.