Today computer manufacturers are building self-encrypting drives (SEDs) into their devices, providing a standardized, hardware-based method of encryption that ships with the computer. If you have an upcoming computer refresh cycle, chances are your new devices could include SEDs.
SEDs are based on technology that encrypts the drive itself, rather than other components of the PC. This means the content of the SED is always encrypted, including the encryption keys.
Industry analysts predict that SEDs will quickly replace traditional software-based encryption solutions which are expensive, can negatively impact computer performance, and often consume significant IT resources to manage encryption keys.
With Absolute Secure Drive, IT administrators can easily configure and set up each SED. Using the Absolute Secure Drive console, they can administer users, authentication methods, policies, and system maintenance through to end-of life.
Computrace customers will be happy to know that Absolute Secure Drive leverages the Computrace BIOS persistence by allowing the Computrace Agent to self-heal onto the encrypted hard drive in the event that the computer is lost or stolen.
For more information, read the data sheet or contact us.
“One of the primary benefits of SEDs is that the encryption is transparent once the drive is unlocked. The drive behaves normally and all transactions appear in clear text at the interface, which means that no operating system modifications or RAID management changes are required, except for unlocking at power-on. There is also no impact to system or drive performance, since all data is encrypted on the fly as it is written to the disk and decrypted as it is read from the disk, and this performance is scalable because each SED is responsible for its own encryption.”
John Monroe, Research VP
Gartner