First Looks at Seagate’s Full Disc Encryption Technology

Once the Momentus FDE drive is installed in a notebook PC and a password is set during the first boot, the onboard ASIC, or application specific integrated circuit, will be ready to encrypt data on-the-fly. Upon startup of a system the user will be asked to enter a password to allow access to the disk’s contents. As a user’s system writes data to the disk it will be encrypted with a 192-bit TDEA or 3DES encryption algorithm. The algorithm involves using three 64-bit keys to do an encrypt-decrypt-encrypt function with the keys in that order. A string is encrypted with key 1 followed by a decryption with key 2 and is again encrypted with the 3rd key.

This is nothing short of amazing, though it seems so ‘simple’. How many laptops have been stolen and had important data stolen? This looks like it will be a fantastic way to protect yourself and company from ever having this happen. Check out the full interview with Seagate over at DailyTech.