Are Self Encrypting Drives Useful For Data Security?

Asked By alden clayton 30 points N/A Posted on - 04/13/2012

A new drive has been out in the market lately called Self-encrypting drives. What is your take with self-encrypting drives? Are they more secured than regular drives with data encryption software?

How are they useful for data storage and security?

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Answered By Sollis Parallag 45 points N/A #106670

Are Self Encrypting Drives Useful For Data Security?

Hello Alden.

I'd like to outline the advantages of self-encrypting drives first:

1.  There is negligible performance hit as compared to software-based encryption due to the encryption being at the firmware level.

2.  Users can sometimes tamper with software-based encryption by turning it off without notifying their network administrators.  With self-encrypting drives, this will not be possible.

On the other hand, here are the disadvantages:

1.  It is costly because enterprises will have to replace their current hard drives.

2.  There is currently no way to centralize management of these self-encrypting drives.

To answer your question, yes, it can be said that self-encrypting drives are more secure than conventionally-encrypted hard drives.  However, the cost of ownership hinders its adoption.

Hope this provides you with some useful insight.

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• Posted on - 04/15/2012
• Question Category: Storage Technology