Toshiba Storage Device Division (SDD) today announced a 7,200 RPM
2.5-inch (6.4cm) Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) that provides
government-grade AES-256 hardware encryption incorporated in the
disk drive's controller electronics.
The MKxx61GSYD is the newest addition to the Toshiba family of
drives designed for commercial notebooks and security-sensitive
applications, including shared desktop PCs. The drive's built-in
hardware encryption offers benefits that go beyond software
encryption.
Based on the Opal Security Subsystem Class (Opal SSC)
specification from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), the new
Toshiba SED enables secure and quick deployment of encryption on
notebook and desktop PCs to protect confidential information.
SEDs designed to the Opal SSC specification provide advanced
access authentication and built-in hardware data encryption.
The MKxx61GSYD provides provides AES-256 encryption, built into
the drive's electronics hardware. In addition, access to the
Toshiba MKxx61GSYD SED can be securely administered or disabled
remotely, using capabilities such as those enabled by Intel's
Active Management Technology (AMT).
With SED storage, the initial encryption of OS files,
applications, and user data is performed at full I/O speeds by
the SED as the data are transferred to the disk media. With
software encryption, loading of the OS, applications and user
data must be completed prior to reading and encrypting the same
data within the PC?s system memory and re-writing the encrypted
data back to the drive. This "re-encryption cycle" often takes
hours and may create a security gap during initial system
deployment.
With SED drives, disk contents are encrypted as they are loaded,
providing both a faster and more secure deployment process. These
same advantages help to reduce IT support burdens when recovering
or re-purposing a notebook or PC using SED storage.
The MKxx61GSYD is compatible with third party security
management applications for notebook and other client PCs.
Software encryption uses CPU cycles and system memory capacity,
reducing the performance of applications. The hardware encryption
built-into the MKxx61GSYD allows full storage I/O speeds,
ensuring that users will experience no
reduction in application performance due to background encryption
processes.
Toshiba is shipping samples of the MKxx61GSYD now. Volume
production is scheduled for Q1 2011.