Wave Systems Corp. (fka WAVXQ)

[Tsunami07]

Western Digital buying Hitachi unit for $4.3B in hard drive consolidation move

March 7, 2011

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Western-Digital-buying-apf-1994988174.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=

IRVINE, Calif. (AP) -- Western Digital Corp., the world's largest maker of hard drives, on Monday said it is buying Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, the third largest, for $4.3 billion in cash and stock.

The move comes as traditional, spinning hard drives are beginning to see serious competition from solid-state flash memory. Tablets and smart phones, which use flash memory, are starting to overshadow computers, which mostly still use hard drives.

Irvine, Calif.-based Western Digital said that the deal includes $3.5 billion in cash, plus 25 million of its common shares. The stock is valued at $750 million based on the company's Friday closing stock price of $30.01.

After the closing of the deal, Hitachi Global Storage's parent, Hitachi Ltd., will own about 10 percent of Western Digital. Two of the company's executives will also join Western Digital's board.

Japan-based Hitachi Ltd. makes a huge array of products from nuclear power plants to rice cookers. It has been reshaping its business, cutting jobs, closing plants and shedding segments, helping some money-losing businesses such as auto parts and digital media rebound into the black.

Hitachi bought the disk drive unit from IBM Corp. in 2002. It's still based in San Jose, Calif., and has a factory there and in Rochester, Minn. It also has factories in China, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. It has 35,000 employees in all.

Steve Milligan, president and CEO of Hitachi Global Storage, will join Western Digital after the transaction's completion. He will report to Western Digital CEO John Coyne.

Both companies' boards have approved the acquisition, which is expected to close in the third quarter.

Western Digital said it plans to pay for the buyout with existing cash and about $2.5 billion in total debt.

The acquisition is expected to immediately add to Western Digital's adjusted earnings per share.

Seagate Technology PLC is the second-largest maker of hard drives. Together, Western Digital and Hitachi will be nearly twice as large as Seagate, by number of units shipped, according to research firm iSuppli.

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Hitachi GST and Wave Offer Enterprises Comprehensive Solution for Advanced Data Protection

History: June 8, 2010

http://www.wave.com/news/press_archive/10/100608_Hitachi.asp

Hitachi Opal Self-Encrypting Drives and Wave Management Software are Available for Purchase Separately through Select Resellers and Distributors

Lee, MA — Wave Systems Corp. announced today that the current production version of its EMBASSY® security software is compatible with Hitachi Global Storage Technologies’ (Hitachi GST) Travelstar™ self-encrypting hard drives (SEDs) available through Hitachi’s worldwide distribution channels this month. The drives (specific models listed below) are some of the first commercially available self-encrypting hard drives based on Opal, the Trusted Computing Group’s storage specification that defines a set of drive security features. Wave EMBASSY management software (available separately from Wave’s channel partners, resellers and direct from Wave) provides IT managers with robust capabilities for deploying, administering and managing Hitachi’s SEDs.

Due to their portability and value, laptops are highly susceptible to theft—and today laptop theft is a leading cause of data breach. Beyond the impact of a breach to an organization’s reputation and credibility, such occurrences often result in legal liability with steep penalties. A data breach can easily cost up to $200 per each compromised record, factoring in the expense of legal counsel, public relations and notifying customers.

To help combat this issue, Hitachi GST is providing Opal TCG standards-based hardware encryption on certain models of its Travelstar mobile hard drives. Unlike software encryption, which does encryption in the main CPU of the PC, Hitachi’s Travelstar SEDs encrypt data at interface speed. When read back, the drive decrypts the data so that it can be understood by the system. And since the hard drive is doing the encryption work, there is no impact on system performance. The drive is always automatically encrypting data, so when the access control settings are enabled on the drive, IT managers can be assured that data is protected.

“Hitachi is a leader in data protection. In fact, we've been providing self-encryption as an optional feature on our popular Travelstar mobile hard drives for four generations,” said Brendan Collins, Vice President, Product Marketing, Hitachi GST. “Our collaboration with Wave helps enable IT managers to easily safeguard a pool of notebooks by providing them with easy-to-use client software with integrated drive management and security capabilities.”

Remote Administration, Detailed Event Logs Part of the Value Wave Brings

Wave’s Trusted Drive Manager client software enables pre-boot authentication, the enrollment of drive administrators and users, and the ability to backup drive credentials. For centralized IT management of the self-encrypting drives, Wave’s EMBASSY® Remote Administration Server (ERAS) is designed to let IT managers remotely turn on each drive in seconds and to provide detailed event logs for compliance assertions to prove that the security settings were in place if a loss or theft occurs. Because self-encrypting drives with Wave’s software are easy to set up and easy to use, there is virtually no significant learning curve for the end user or IT support staff.

“We applaud Hitachi’s efforts to make Opal-based drives available to the market, giving organizations additional self-encrypting drive choices as more enterprises look to deploy hardware-based encryption,” said Steven Sprague, Wave’s President and CEO. “With self-encrypting drives, users can gain the peace of mind in knowing that whatever’s on the drive—trade secrets, intellectual property or confidential employee information—is protected.”

Hitachi SED Travelstar drive models include:

Capacity Model Number / P/N
500GB HTS725050A9A365 0A79105
320GB HTS725032A9A365 0A79103
250GB HTS725025A9A365 0A79102
160GB HTS725016A9A365 0A79101

Please visit the Hitachi GST website for a list of authorized resellers and distributors.


About Wave Systems Corp.

Wave is a pioneer in hardware-based PC security that provides software to help solve critical enterprise PC security challenges such as data protection, strong authentication, network access control and the management of these enterprise functions. Wave is a founding member of the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), a consortium of more than 100 companies that forged open standards for hardware security. Wave’s EMBASSY® line of client- and server-side software leverages and manages the security functions of the TCG’s industry standard hardware security chip, the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) as well as hard drives that comply with TCG’s “Opal” self-encrypting drive (SED) standard. Self-encrypting drives are a growing segment of the data protection market, offering increased security and better performance than most existing software-based encryption solutions. TPMs are standard equipment on many enterprise-class PCs shipping today and have shipped on an estimated 300 million PCs worldwide. Using TPMs and/or S
EDs and Wave software, enterprises can substantially and cost-effectively strengthen their current security solutions. Visit http://www.wave.com for more information.

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Keep Your Data Safe With Self-Encrypting Hard Drives

"Manufactures supporting the new encryption standards include: Western Digital, Toshiba, Fujitsu and Samsung"

History: February 19, 2009

http://www.pc1news.com/news/0537/keep-your-data-safe-with-self-encrypting-hard-drives.html

The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) has provided hard-drive manufactures and vendors with three new encryption standards. To date almost all the major hard-drive manufacturers have stated their intentions to adopt the new standards. Self-encrypted hard-drives are already available and vendors such as Seagate and Hitachi have already taken the first steps in an effort to better protect stored data.

The nonprofit organization TCG, has been developing open vendor-neutral standards for a while now, but considers its Opal standards to be the blueprint for all levels of data protection as well as the manufacturing of self-encrypting hard drives. The TCG predicts that in a few years self-encrypting drives will be utilized in different enterprises world wide. Looking at the new data protection laws being enforced in different states and countries TCG's predictions might just come true as businesses continue searching for the most convenient way to protect data and avoid hefty fines and even lawsuits.

The following points are the three new specifications introduced by TCG:

The Opal specification: These outline the minimum requirements for storage devices utilized on computers and laptops.

The Enterprise Security Subsystem Class Specification: This concentrates on drives in data centers and high-volume applications.

The Storage Interface Interactions Specification: This gives details on how other standards for storage interfaces and connections in addition to how the TCG's existing Storage Core Specification (including other specifications) interact with each other.

TCG’s approach to Trusted Storage provides manufacturers and users with an easy and understandable method of fully encrypting data in hardware in order to ensure the safety of the data regardless of what happens to the drive. According to the chairman of the TCG, Robert Thibadeau "When a USB drive is unplugged, or when a laptop is powered down, or when an administrator pulls a drive from a server, it can't be brought back up and read without first giving a cryptographically-strong password. If you don't have that, it's a brick. You can't even sell it on eBay".

Research by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse revealed that from January 2005, an estimate of 251,154,519 records were lost or stolen in the United States alone. The number of data breaches taking place each year are definitely on the rise but at least cautious user behavior has brought down criminal profits. Other Manufactures supporting the new encryption standards include: Western Digital, Toshiba, Fujitsu and Samsung.

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