Trusted Storage: Putting Security and Data Together

Abstract

State and Federal breach notification legislation mandates that the affected parties be notified in case of a breach of sensitive personal data, unless the data was provably encrypted. Self-encrypting hard drives provide the superior solution for encrypting data-at-rest when compared to software-based solutions. Self-encrypting hard drives, from the laptop to the data center, have been standardized across the hard drive industry by the Trusted Computing Group. Advantages include: simplified management (including keys), no performance impact, quick data erasure and drive re-purposing, no interference with end-to-end data integrity metrics, always encrypting, no cipher-text exposure, and scalability in large data centers.