Vendors team up to protect mobile data

Firms start offering full-disk encryption for corporate laptops

Seagate and security firm Secude are teaming up to deliver full-disk encryption to protect information on corporate laptops.

The system, due this spring, combines Seagate’s Momentus 5400 Full-Disk Encryption (FDE) hard drives with Secude’s TiDoCoMi access management technology. The Seagate drives have built-in hardware-based encryption, while TiDoCoMi supports user authentication and management of the encryption keys.

TiDoCoMi allows system administrators to back up passwords, certificates and other digital identities to protect against loss, said Secude. It also enables easy redeployment of hard drives and helps firms to securely dispose of laptops that may contain sensitive information.

“Most companies have no policy on how to dispose of laptops,” said Anders Bally, vice-president of technical and business development at Secude. He said that with TiDoCoMi, simply changing the encryption key serves as a secure erase, because it renders any data on the drive unreadable.

The software requires users to authenticate themselves before boot-up and supports various multifactor authentication techniques, such as passwords combined with smartcards or USB tokens with fingerprint sensors.

TiDoCoMi will ship in an enterprise version that includes a server-based console to manage keys. It will also be pre-installed on laptops with Seagate Momentus 5400 FDE drives so that customers can use it on a try-before-you–buy basis.

Bally said Secude is in talks about its technology with all major laptop makers, including Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo and HP.