Samsung First to Offer SSD Full Disk Encryption
Full Disk Encryption Comes to Solid State Drives
Lee, MA and San Jose, CA: Wave Systems Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., have collaborated to give professionals on the go the ultimate in hard drive security. Along with blazing speed, ultra-fast boot-up and silent operation, Samsung's new self-encrypting SSDs automatically encrypt information as it's saved to the drive, an industry first for SSDs.
Full disk encryption (FDE) has already been adopted as a standard feature available in many commercial laptop and desktop systems with hard disk drives. Samsung self-encrypting drives - 256-, 128- and 64-gigabyte SSDs - provide FDE bundled with Wave's EMBASSY management software and are now available through at least one major OEM.
"Samsung has combined the tremendous performance advantages of solid state technology with integrated hardware encryption for drives designed especially for today's 'road warrior' professionals," said Jim Elliott, memory vice president, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. "Business users now get the best of performance and security in a single drive."
Samsung's new 256GB, 128GB, and 64GB SSDs are the first solid state drives to incorporate hardware-based encryption, which has made headlines in recent weeks with publication of the industry's Opal storage specification published by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG). Benefits of hardware encryption over today's software-only encryption approaches include faster performance, better security and an "always on" feature. Because encryption keys and access credentials are generated and stored within the drive hardware, they never leave its confines and are never held in the operating system or by application software. This hardware FDE approach is considered more secure and less complex to manage.
"Samsung is breaking new ground in performance and security with its solid state FDE drives," said Steven Sprague, Wave’s president and CEO. "Whether it's with cars or computers, many people will always demand the very best in performance and Samsung is delivering on that promise. With self-encrypting drives, users have the peace of mind that whatever's on the drive—credit card numbers, medical records, sensitive personal data or intellectual property is always protected."
Each Samsung self-encrypting SSD, when ordered in a new computer, now comes bundled with Wave's EMBASSY Trusted Drive Manager for complete life cycle management of the drive including pre-boot authentication to the drive and enrolling drive administrators and users. Trusted Drive Manager also enables the backup of drive credentials.
