Fujitsu Intros Full-Disk Encryption

By Greg McNevin

April 23, 2008: With an estimated 700,000 laptops stolen every year, data security concerns still plague the IT industry. With this in mind, Fujitsu has introduced what it claims is the world’s most advanced full-disk laptop hard drive encryption technology.

The new encryption features are built into Fujitsu’s MHZ2 CJ series 2.5" 7,200RPM SATA hard disk drive (HDD), and uses the AES-256 encryption standard.

AES-256 is currently the strongest available full-disk encryption (FDE) on the market, and as encryption and decryption are performed by the hardware of the drive instead of by the computer’s CPU and memory there is no impact to system performance.

The encryption key is cryptographically regenerated at power-on, and is not even known to the HDD when the system is powered off.

“With industry reports estimating 700,000 laptops stolen every year and the associated costs reaching $5.4 billion, organisations are facing a clear and pressing security threat,” said David James, vice president of advanced product engineering at Fujitsu.

“The Fujitsu MHZ2 CJ series creates a simple-to-use and virtually impenetrable data lock down. The data on the disk drive remains inaccessible without the password, delivering advanced protection for the organisation owning the machine, and the critical data for which they are responsible.”

Comment on this story