Seagate Announces Tougher 1 Terabyte Encryption

September 10, 2007: Hard drive manufacturer, Seagate Technology has announced it’s recently developed 1 Terrabyte hard drive will now come with Government grade encryption.

Encryption on the hard drive level is becoming increasingly popular as attacks move from the application to the hard drive. Seagate is adding AES encryption, a government grade security protocol to its existing Barracuda line. Called the Barracuda FDE (Full Disk Encryption, Seagate are hailing it as the world’s first 3.5-inch desktop PC drive with native encryption. Logging back onto a compromised drive requires a pre-boot user password that can have additional authentication layers added to it such as smart cards and biometrics.

“Data security has traditionally focused on preventing spoofing, sniffing, eavesdropping, denial-of-service and other threats to data traversing corporate networks and the Internet,” said Tom Major, Seagate vice president of Personal Compute Business. “Now that these networks have been hardened and are much more resistant to attack, computer thugs are increasingly targeting the place where data lives – on the hard drive.”

Offered in sizes up to and including 1 Terabyte, Seagate claim the new drives offer a cost-effective way to retire or repurpose unused hard drives without fear of data being compromised.

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