Seagate First to NIST Certification

Month Date, 2007: Seagate has announced that the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have certified the world’s first laptop hard drive with native encryption.

Seagate has become the first hard drive provider to obtain the NIST encryption certification. The certification is for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption chip built into Seagate’s Momentus 5400 FDE.2 disc drive, which prevents access to data if the laptop becomes lost or stolen. The native encryption is taking security to the next step, moving from the traditional software approach to the hardware level.

Laptop hard drive security is under increased scrutiny thanks to a growth explosion in the market, putting “more sensitive personal and business information at risk” said Tom Major, vice president of Personal Compute Business, Seagate.

With the Laptop boom has come other security concerns, such as retiring old laptop drives and The NIST certification is an attractive standard to obtain, as the market is calling for government-grade security of drives. “With this important certification, our system builder and end-user customers can rest assured” Major said.

Comment on this story.