Seagate Encrypted Drive
Seagate has announced a product called DriveTrust, which provides hardware-based encryption on the drive itself. The technology is proprietary, but they use standard algorithms: AES and triple-DES, RSA, and SHA-1. Details on the key management are sketchy, but the system requires a pre-boot password and/or combination of biometrics to access the disk. And Seagate is working on some sort of enterprise-wide key management system to make it easier to deploy the technology company-wide.
The first target market is laptop computers. No computer manufacturer has announced support for DriveTrust yet.
John Ridley • November 7, 2006 7:45 AM
Prediction:
Casual users will lose the password and get really steamed that there’s no backdoor.
Serious users will assume there’s a backdoor and won’t use it.
For my uses, truecrypt works fine. I’m not too worried about my boot area, but I want the data locked down. Truecrypt handles that just fine.